LECTURES, ESSAYS, AND 
SERMONS 



SAMUEL "JOHNSON, 

AUTHOR OF " ORIENTAL RELIGIONS." 



WITH A MEMOIR 

BY 

SAMUEL LONGFELLOW. 



Welche Religion ich bekenne? Keine von alien, 

Die du mir nennst — Und warum keine? Aus Religion." 

Schiller. 




BOSTON: 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 

New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street. 

1883. 



Copyright, 1883, 
By HOUGIITON, MIFFLIN & CO, 

All rights reserved. 



THE LIBRARY 
Of C ONGR ESS I 

WASHINGTON 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & 



CONTENTS. 



MEMOIR. 

PAGE 

I. Boyhood 1 

II. College Life . . . 3 

III. Divinity School 10 

IV. Visit to Europe 20 

V. Divinity School and First Preaching . . .26 

VI. Life at Lynn .39 

VII. Second Visit to Europe 60 

VIII. After his Return to Lynn . . . . 19 

IX. Life in North Andover 116 

X. Last Days 139 

LECTURES, ESSAYS, AND SERMONS. 

Florence 145 

The Alps of the Ideal and the Switzerland of the 

Swiss 183 

Symbolism of the Sea 216 

Fulfillment of Functions ....... 240 

Equal Opportunity for Woman 259 

Labor Parties and Labor Reform . . . . m . 281 
The Law of the Blessed Life ..... 314 

Gain in Loss 342 

The Search for God . . . . . . . 360 

Fate . . . . . . . . . . .378 

Living by Faith . 391 

"The Duty of Delight" 403 

Transcendentalism 416 

Appendix 461 



MEMOIR. 



The first time that I remember seeing Samuel 
Johnson was in the old College Chapel at Cam- 
bridge. It was the "Class-day" of 1842; and he 
was giving the class oration. It was poetic even to 
rhapsody ; certainly very unlike ordinary college 
orations. I remember only one passage, and that 
indistinctly : it was something about the warrior's 
shields sounding upon the walls, — some illustration, 
very likely, from Ossian. But I recall, as if it were 
seen yesterday, the dark, animated countenance, the 
flowing hair, the earnest, musical tones, the light, 
quick movement from one foot to the other, — the 
whole air of inspiration. It was as fascinating as it 
was unloosed for. This must have been in July. 
In the autumn of the same year, when I entered the 
Divinity School, I soon found him out among my 
classmates. The same fascination drew me toward 
him, and then began a friendship which continued 
for forty years. 

I. 

Samuel Johnson was born in Salem, Massachu- 
setts, on the 10th of October, 1822. His father was 
a much respected physician, his mother " of an old 
Salem family." In that town far the larger part of 
l 



2 



MEMOIR. 



his life was passed ; in it but not of it. We can 
picture hiin in his boyhood, with his earnest face, 
going to and from school through those elm-shaded 
streets, looking up at the fine old gambrel-roofed 
houses, or the statelier mansions of a later date, 
where dwelt much wealth and much conservatism. 
Or on holiday afternoons rambling over the neigh- 
boring fields, searching the woods for wild flowers, 
or extending his walk to the shore of the harbor, or 
to the sea-beaches not very far away. A playmate 
and daily companion of his boyhood describes him 
as " a health y-natured, active boy, entering with zest 
into all boyish games ; with a quick eye for any- 
thing ludicrous, or that would raise a shout of laugh- 
ter ; indeed, though gentle, affectionate, and utterly 
guileless, a leader in sports even to the point of 
daring and sometimes of danger ; with all the en- 
thusiasm in these things that marked him as a re- 
former in later years." He must often have found 
his way to the old East Indian Museum, which the 
sea-captains had filled with curiosities from Calcutta 
or Bombay, — such wonders to a boy's eye. One is 
tempted to ask whether it is to that group of painted 
figures, presenting the various castes and trades of 
India, that we owe the first impulse of interest whose 
outcome was the " Oriental Religions." More cer- 
tainly we might say that the collections in natural 
science there were the beginning of the interest in 
geology and mineralogy, which was strong through 
his later years. I will not venture to hint that his 
interest in science received any occult impulse from 
his having been born in the very house where the 
astronomer, Nathaniel Bowditch, first opened his 
eyes upon the sky. 



MEMOIR. 



3 



His best influences were found in the good and 
happy home, in which not only his boyhood but the 
greater part of his manhood were spent, since for 
more than one reason he never formed a borne for 
himself. In that home he found the most devoted 
affection, the love of books, flowers, music, and a sim- 
ple rational piety of the Unitarian stamp. Of that 
home he was always the light and the life. Never 
was there a warmer affection, a truer fidelity, than 
he showed to every member of it, through many 
trials, and through all his life. 

His school-days over, at the age of sixteen he went 
up to Cambridge and entered Harvard College : a 
studious, thoughtful, conscientious, affectionate, pure- 
minded boy ; one of those boys who seem never to 
do anything wrong, not from lack of liveliness, but 
from purity of heart and a quick sense of right. 

n. 

Of Johnson's life in college I am glad to have a 
sketch sent me from his classmate and intimate, D. 
H. Jaques. I will give it in his words, somewhat 
abridged : — 

Johnson's face and person in those college days would 
attract attention anywhere. A dark, but warm and rich 
complexion ; hair black as ink, and always worn long ; a 
large, full, dark eye ; a tall figure ; an eager, headlong, 
swinging gait in walking, the head projected as if in quest 
of some object (the truth ?) before him in the distance ; a 
full, deep, and sincere voice ; a bright smile, a hearty and 
musical laugh. These are the personal traits which mem- 
ory brings back to me. 



4 



MEMOIR. 



He was one of the most unaffected men I ever knew, 
with a perfectly natural ease of manner in his intercourse 
with others. . . . Hence it was that he was a favorite, as 
the phrase is, was "popular" in the class. Although it 
was well understood that he was so absorbed in his studies 
that he did not care to cultivate society, yet every man in 
the class had for him the kindest feelings, and sought his 
society as of one of the most companionable of men. This 
was shown by his election as orator on class-day, — an 
honor not often paid to mere scholarship. 

He had a genuine humor, an eye quick to see the odd 
and the ridiculous, a love for a joke, a laugh loud, hearty, 
and contagious. But with all this gayety, this humor of 
the earlier college days, with all his ambition of college 
rank, deep below it and high above it was the serious pur- 
pose of study, the serious sense of the duty of self-culture. 

He followed closely the prescribed course of college 
study. His turn of mind was decidedly in the direction 
of the classics, psychology, ethics, and English literature. 
But he resolutely gave himself to the vigorous study of the 
pure mathematics. Indeed, he showed a docility and sub- 
missiveness in pursuing the discipline prescribed, which 
were in striking contrast with the defiance of mere author- 
ity, the genuine spirit of the Puritan and Independent, 
with which he asserted for himself in after life the right, in 
all matters of religious belief and of public policy and pri- 
vate conduct, to think and act for himself and by himself. 

With Dr. Walker he read portions of Locke, and Cous- 
in's Lectures on Psychology, translated by Dr. Henry; 
Jouffroy's Ethics, translated by Mr. Channing, and Say's 
Political Economy. Such a discipline, it will be seen, did 
not tend to make him a sensationalist in metaphysics, or a 
utilitarian in morals. Dr. Walker's mind made itself felt, 
not only in the recitation-room, but in the pulpit of the col- 
lege chapel, where he preached more frequently than any 
one else, and where Johnson attended with unfailing punc- 



MEMOIR. 



5 



tuality. I never knew him to be absent from the daily- 
morning and evening prayers. 

With Professor Channing he read Whately's Logic and 
Rhetoric, and Campbell's Rhetoric, and found labor of love 
in preparing the Themes and Forensics ; acquiring a purity 
of style under the criticisms of Channing and by the aid 
of Walker's sound judgment, which was never permanently 
affected. 

He took the prescribed course in French to the end of 
the senior year, reading with Professor Longfellow Gil 
Bias and some plays of Moliere. These exercises were in 
a room in University Hall, not ordinarily used as a recita- 
tion-room, and not arranged with benches, but carpeted, 
and furnished with chairs around a long table. And my 
recollection of them is of something unconstrained and in- 
formal that was delightful. I do not think that Johnson 
studied Italian or German in college. [Italian he never 
liked ; but with German he afterwards became thoroughly 
familiar.] 

In Latin and Greek he took the extended course to the 
end of the Senior year, reading Horace, Juvenal, Persius, 
and the Be Officiis ; Herodotus, several books of the Iliad, 
Alcestis, An,tigone, Prometheus, CEdipus Tyrannus, and 
The Clouds. 

Of his own estimate of his college studies we get • 
some hint from letters of a later time. Thus in 1880, 
he writes, speaking of the death of George Ripley : — 

" I shall never forget the glorious work that his 
Philosophical Series did in the great dawn of Amer- 
ican thought, — 4 Specimens of Foreign Literature,' 
it was called. ' Jouffroy's Moral Philosophy' [in 
this series] was the most delightful text-book I ever 
studied. And my happiest recollections of Harvard 
run to my work on this, and on Cousin's Criticism 
of Locke." 



6 



MEMOIR. 



And in reference to his classical studies, here is an 
extract from a letter written in 1874, to his friend 
R,. H. Manning, who had sent him an address deliv- 
ered at the opening of an academy in Ipswich : — 

In what you say of the Latin and Greek languages, in 
their relation to practical culture for common life, I in gen- 
eral very well agree, though I think you intimate less faith 
in those languages as stimulants to that sense of beauty, 
order, and law, which you so well characterize as the sub- 
stance of science, than my own experience will indorse. 
My whole deliverance from miracles, etc., into theological 
freedom, — such sense of order, beauty, and harmony in 
the world and life, and such recognition of the cosmical (or 
universal) in thought, and the radical in philosophy as has 
since been developed in me, began and was rooted in dis- 
tinct form, before physical science interested me in any but 
the vaguest and most distant manner. And my whole joy 
of discovery and inward revelation in these directions is 
intimately associated with the splendid, clear, truth-facing 
heathenism of my school and college classics. You will 
count one man's experience, who has gone as far as I from 
the old ways, as worth something ; and you will not wonder 

at my looking a little askance at A 's somewhat cavalier 

treatment of studies which I don't think he quite appre- 
ciates in their peculiar refining, enlarging power over the 
growing mind. You will, perhaps, be surprised when I tell 
you that, for my very conception of Law as at the root of 
all being, for my belief in the Infinite as one with, and not 
apart from, the Cosmos, for my power to demand unity, de- 
velopment, and freedom in all processes of life, and for my 
philosophy of moral relations, self-respect, and conformity 
to just and real conditions, — I bless my Greek and Latin 
classics more than any other school-teaching, or subsequent 
scientific study. And I must add, that no small part of 
this help comes in the introduction to a foreign world of 
language and belief This of itself is a wonderful emanci- 



MEMOIR. 



7 



pation, and gives that shift of position which conditions 
fresh and free thought. There is a world of liberty and a 
range of imagination in these disciplines which I think very- 
essential to protect our American education from tapering 
into technicalism and the petty detail which has already 
grown so disintegrative of solid thought, and free, broad 
synthesis, in the scientific text-books and studies. 

If I had space for some of his letters from col- 
lege, we should see him in his room, No. 6 Divinity 
Hall (of which he sends a graphic description to his 
sister), feeling himself with his little library " richer 
than Croesus;" enjoying the life, "where everything 
is so monotonous, yet so interesting ; " " studying 
hard," and finding his studies " remarkably interest- 
ing, — not a task but a positive recreation ; " getting 
his " marks " at the President's study, always up to 
or very near the maximum 8 ; visited by hazing 
sophomores ("a provoking evil"), but "driving them 
off with a club ; " not present at "the great football 
game on the Delta ; " getting, " between 6 A. M. and 
10J- P. M.," about two hours a day for exercise, "which 
generally, but not always [alas for that not, I fear 
too frequent,] is consumed in walking round the 
town by many beautiful and picturesque routes;" 
visiting " Fresh Pond and Mt. Auburn Cemetery, a 
scene of beauty and imposing solemnity ; " promis- 
ing to obey his mother's advice as to health, " fully 
aware that it is of the greatest importance, as father 
has often told " him ; attending on Thursday evenings 
the meetings for religious improvement, under the 
direction of the devout Professor Henry Ware, the 
younger; " always making it a point to finish lessons 
before going to any meeting ; " " much struck " with 
a remark of his Greek tutor, Jones Very, about " the 



8 



MEMOIR. 



object of study being to fit ourselves more completely 
to do God's will in benefiting mankind ; " calling 
even the Commons' table " excellent ; " and begging 
bis father not to be anxious on his account, since the 
" temptations are very slight, and require no very 
great exercise of self-government and firmness to 
resist." 

These letters are full of affectionate messages to 
every member of his family circle. He writes to 
his younger sisters, urging them to keep diaries, and 
explaining at length the methods and benefits ; and 
afterwards sends them word, " that this diary busi- 
ness must not be allowed to interfere with their les- 
sons." He is constantly solicitous for his mother's 
health and her freedom from too much household 
care, and urges her not to neglect walking out, and 
is interested in the progress of the flower-garden of 
which she was fond, and signs himself, "with every 
feeling of love and gratitude, your affectionate son." 

So he wrote in his Freshman year, and so he con- 
tinued to write and to feel, only more maturely. 

In one of his first letters from Cambridge he speaks 
of the great delight with which he had listened to 
a sermon in the College Chapel from the younger 
Henry Ware. It was the sermon on the " Person- 
ality of God," called out by the address of Mr. Em- 
erson before the graduating class of the Divinity 
School. That address, which had been a sun-burst to 
so many young minds, was to most of the elders an 
ominous and baleful meteor, "portending change." 
Mr. Ware's sermon was meant as a warning and 
antidote against its supposed " Pantheism." It drew 
from Mr. Emerson that delightfully characteristic 
letter which many of my readers will remember. 



MEMOIR. 



9 



There is no record of our freshman's having read 
the address, nor was he likely to do so at that time. 
One would like to know how he would have been 
" struck " by it had he heard it, in view of his later 
developments. For the present, however, he is — as 
his classmate says — "a conservative Unitarian of 
the school of Ware and Walker." Of his religious 
thought and feeling, later in his college life, we have 
this glimpse : — 

TO HIS SISTER A. 

May 28, 1841. 

Is not this a strange world that runs thoughtlessly on 
through all this living, speaking loveliness, which seems to 
point every moment toward the God whose hand is form- 
ing and fashioning all before all eyes ? How few there 
are who seem to have any but a theoretical belief that 
there is something at work around us besides the trees, the 
flowers, the clouds, and the sun ! We see them at work, 
and ask no further ; ask not who makes them work, who 
gives them all their loveliness and liberty and life. . . . 
What should we do but fall down and adore before this 
visible creation of an invisible and all-pervading Being? 
. . . Thank Him that you are able to read in the flowers 
the poetry of His love. 

Johnson graduated in 1842, the second in his 
class, but with health somewhat impaired by exces- 
sive application to study, and doubtless by other vio- 
lations or neglect of hygienic laws, into which stu- 
dious youths are apt to fall. 

Rest and travel, however, afterwards restored the 
old tone and vigor of mind and body. 



10 



MEMOIR. 



m. 

When Johnson, on entering college, had taken a 
room in Divinity Hall, his pastor sent him the mes- 
sage that he hoped " he would remain there for seven 
years," — that is, that he would add to the four years 
of college the three of the Divinity School. His 
reply was, "Thank Mr. T. for his hint, but I shall 
not take it, begging his pardon." "Nothing that he 
ever said to me," writes his classmate Jaques, " indi- 
cated a purpose of entering the ministry." Never- 
theless, such a purpose grew up in his mind and 
heart, and in the autumn after his graduation he be- 
came a member of the Divinity School. It was then 
under the charge of Dr. Francis and Dr. Noyes, who, 
owing to the then extremely reduced condition of 
the school-funds, did the work of four professors. 

TO HIS MOTHER. 

1842. 

I am most anxious to see you again, and tell you how I 
am and how pleasant my studies are. . . . Meantime hear 
from me that I am greatly satisfied with my work, and that 
the class is a remarkably pleasant and interesting one. 
There is among us great material for laughter in the eccen- 
tricities of some of the class ; and nowhere, I believe, is 
there more ample room for the cultivation of the social 
feelings. Our studies are just what we choose to make 
them, affording the means of indolence or of great im- 
provement. I trust I shall not so forget what I owe to 
religion and conscience and society, as to neglect the ad- 
mirable opportunities here presented for the study of the 
great questions of religious belief and moral duty. Our 
library is excellent, and we have unlimited freedom in the 



MEMOIR. 



11 



use of it. We are guided by Dr. Francis in the selection of 
books, and partly by our own judgment. 

After all, what have I to ask, but that you should keep 
yourself free from all anxiety? And what have I to hope, 
except that you do not allow cares of household things to 
disturb you ; and that little F. gives you as much pleasure 
as ever ; and that the girls try to do their part ; and that 
you see father in the best of health ; and that our little 
family circle is filled with peace and good thoughts ? And 
what have I to tell, except that all has gone well with me, 
and that I try to fit myself for entering what seems to be 
the most responsible profession which a man can enter. 
Most gratefully, your affectionate son. 

TO HIS SISTER A. 

December, 1842. 

I am sorry for the interruption of your weekly studies 
of the Scriptures. . . . There is a great advantage to be 
expected from the reading of classical English literature 
with a lady of so much taste as Miss W., yet you must be 
aware how inferior is this advantage to the other. ... It 
should be the great work to build up the inward principles. 
True convictions can be founded only on principles ; and 
convictions are the only light we have to walk by. . . . 
No better means of developing habits of thought can be 
devised than the reading attentively our own literature. 
It contains every species of thought and every variety of 
style. In its older effusions there is a simple sincerity, an 
earnest zeal for truth, a calm sobriety of judgment, a strong 
terseness of thought and expression, a fullness of reflection, 
and a cheerful, genial temper, which secure our sympathy 
and fill us with love for all things and all beings. . . . 
And this is one of the purest influences of our early litera- 
ture that it cultivates your love of the simple, childlike 
sentiments, and your reverence for the truth. 



12 



MEMOIR. 



TO HIS MOTHER. 

A Spring Day (1843?). 
It is a hazy, dull hour of a day of sweet promise. The 
spring will come ; these dull, heavy clouds cannot keep her 
back. She is coming : nay, she is present in the promise 
of her presence. For to feel like spring is to be in the 
spring. I shall go out soon, into the woods, to pick anem- 
ones and violets, where I can watch the birds build, and 
live with them in their little nests. They fly round my 
window, singing all day long, and you don't know how 
dismal, how almost bad, it seems to be shut up over books. 
If you could come and sit beside my window, sit till the 
evening comes on and the bright sunlight changes into the 
serene, spiritual moonlight, you would think this was a 
dream-world, indeed, and there was no sorrow nor evil 
anywhere, even to the eye of sense. This solemn, gentle 
change is the most wonderful and speaking thing we see. 
We must be religious when we are watching it ; we can- 
not help it. 

But (heaven save us) how many cold creatures there are 
who would laugh at all this, and call it silly, sentimental, 
affected, and the like, to think so much of sunlight and 
moonlight, instead of attending to one's business. Well, 
let them attend to their business, only let them , leave us to 
ours. Ours is to live in the voice of the all-beautiful and 
holy God ; to hold intercourse with Him in his sweetest 
shadowings forth around us and in us ; to be perfectly free 
from base bonds in the joyful and ever-grateful life of faith 
and love. It is to be with God as much now, as in the fu- 
ture life, which should be but a continuation of the present. 
Each belongs alike to eternity, if we did but understand it. 

TO HIS MOTHER. 

1843. 

I could write far more in answer to the kind letters you 
have written to quiet my anxiety about our dear F., but 



MEMOIR. 



13 



that I am going to walk down to-morrow to visit you. Do 
not be anxious, I pray you. ... It will all be well, we know, 
and we will hope that it will be well without hard trial. 
If prayers, and love, and tender care will bring our dear one 
back to health, he will be restored. Our Father loveth him 
and us better, even, than we can see. How beautifully 
doth sickness foreshow the perfecter union with us of those 
whom we love, by gathering them up, as it were, into our 
very hearts' centre, so that their spirits seem really there. 

TO HIS YOUNGER SISTERS. 

June, 1843. 

My dear Girls, — I am ready to cry at not hearing 
from you. What are you doing ? Are you not going to 
let me into any of your little pleasures and plans ? My 
heart bounds with yours in your pleasant hopes, and my 
eye will see all beautiful things as though it were yours. 
Do let the words you would speak in your happiest mo- 
ments, in all their freshness and liveliness, take the form of 
letters, and pass into my heart as though I were with you. 
And so I am with you when you call me. 

What shall I tell you of ? Flowers, birds, woods, walks, 
true, loving, sincere books, — what ? They are all around 
me here. And they are so deep in my love, and you seem 
so present to me, that I cannot describe them ; for it seems 
as though you knew how they looked as well as I. Tell 
me how you imagine things look about me. 

Little Susan R. comes to my room every now and then, 
early in the morning, to get me to go to ride with her 
mother. But I must see you, in a letter, soon, or I shall 
be miserable. Your own S. 

Meeting Johnson in the school, I was very soon 
attracted to him by certain similarities of 'taste, and 
more by the peculiar earnestness, ideality, and spirit- 
uality of tone which marked him out among the rest. 



14 



MEMOIR. 



The " transcendental movement " in New England 
was then at fall tide. The germs of it had been al- 
ready in Channing's sermons ; Dr. Henry had trans- 
lated Cousin's Criticism of Locke; Emerson had 
printed Nature, and the early addresses at Cam- 
bridge, Dartmouth, and Waterville, — this last his 
completest expression of spiritual pantheism — and 
had collected and edited the chapters of Sartor 
Resartus ; Dr. Walker had given his Lowell Lec- 
tures on Natural Religion, distinctly based on the 
existence in man's nature of certain spiritual fac- 
ulties, which he held to be as trustworthy guides to 
spiritual truths as the senses and understanding are 
to physical facts. 

Johnson was a transcendentalist by nature, a born 
idealist ; the cast of his mind intuitive rather than 
logical. He instinctively sought spiritual truths by 
direct vision, not by any processes of induction; by 
immediate inward experience, rather than by any 
inference from outward experience. God, Eight, 
Immortality, were to him realities of intuition ; that 
is, of direct looking upon; shining by their own light, 
spiritually discerned, the affirmations of the soul. 
But his transcendentalism, which was later to become 
a carefully- weighed rationale of thought, was now a 
nature, a perception, a sentiment, an inward, unar- 
gued faith. It began soon to take on a mystical 
phase, which led him into some deep experiences. 
Something of this will be seen in the following let- 
ters. The first of them was sent to me at Fayal, 
where I had gone for a year. 



MEMOIR. 



15 



June, 1843. 

Gone ! My dear S., you were one of the very, very few 
here with whom I could speak the thoughts that almost 
force themselves out of my lips wherever I am, though I 
am sure of being misunderstood. Imagine me met with a 
blank face or a hopeless incredulity, except in one or two 
directions, you well know where, and bless me with a fresh 
breeze from your orange-bower. If you could pour a flood 
over this cold, spell-bound school, and awaken it to listen 
to that overpowering voice of the All-filling Presence, 
which is true inspiration, you would not be appreciated, 
but your work would be none the less a true work. Truly, 
when I say that all, without and within (if we can make 
such a division), its ever-starry, eternal heavens and its 
burial-place, earth, with the immortality and the life which 
animate them and give them figure ; the centre-soul with 
its heavings, and flutterings, and faint sigh-breathings, and 
deep, silent griefs, and high, brave heart-beatings, — that 
all, all this is one love-mystery, of which we can only 
say,— 

" The awful Presence of some unseen Power 
Floats, though unseen, around us," — 

not only floats around, but actually is all things, is our- 
selves ; then indeed is it most amazing to me, that every 
face around us is not overladen, as the mid-summer air with 
perfume, with the rapture of devotion, burning and melt- 
ing self away ; and that the mystic melody of all does not 
allure us all into spiritual unity, and make society the great 
form of love. But then I feel that what is voice to me is 
silence to the great intellect-world. And when I wake 
from the vision of home into the outward life, I wonder 
how we can have got so perverted as to see the highest 
thing as the lowest, mistake shadow for reality, the out- 
ward for the inward, the voice for silence, the silence for 
voice. You will understand me. 



16 



MEMOIR. 



TO HIS SISTER A. 

June, 1843. 

How shall I describe to you the scene of the Hall, this 
hot, sultry, dreamy, summer weather ! No place ever 
looked so hospitable; its doors all flung wide; the win- 
dows open, the blue heaven pours itself in with the fresh 
breeze. . . . For all we say about exhausting heats at noon, 
and our being then utterly unfit for anything, I am per- 
suaded that the sun at his zenith is the voice calling the 
spirit to hers. " We can only dream then ; " and what are 
the dreams of a pure spirit? The highest life it lives. 
" We cannot work then." Yes, blessed be God, who has 
given a sweet season in the day when his love-warm hand 
presses the weary body, and self-forgetfulness steals over 
the earth-worn and anxious spirit through its consuming 
might, so that the elastic breath of the higher soul may rise 
unfettered into her native air, and sing her untaught mel- 
odies and realize her highest longing. Blessed be the spirit 
of the summer noon ! 

You would laugh to see my stunted flowers [in the 
Divinity Hall gardens]. I, who love growth and cannot 
bear to see anything still, to be unable to make my choice 
flowerlings stir! I am becoming ashamed of their indo- 
lence. Can it be they have reached maturity? But they 
are not rich or bright. They are like those awfully old- 
faced children, who have been made little men and women. 
This is the fault of the parents very often. Is n't that 
view of the matter likely to make me stretch my face, when 
I think what sort of a parent I have been to these little 
prematurely grown, and now obstinately still, flowers ? But 
I am hopeful of them yet. Bad habits in a child but a 
few weeks old are not irremediable. 

July 9, 1843. 

I went in the forenoon to see the menagerie, because I 
had heard so much of Herr Driesbach's power over ani- 



MEMOIR. 



17 



mals. This power of fascination is a hint at a great truth 
in spiritual influences. Man has within him a power of 
will, which, when guided and inspired by love, can reduce 
all things to itself, and mould the world to its good pleas- 
ure. This power is in every being ; but in none is it ever 
fully developed. . . . There is a great mystery in these se- 
cret influences which thoughtless people little dream of, and 
which common sense, so called, cares nothing about. In 
the wonderful manner in which, through books, the spirits 
of other men, long since dead, enter into and inspire ours ; 
in the eloquent language of eye and lip which, without 
words, merely by expression, conveys deepest feelings ; in 
the presence in our souls of strange presentiments, intu- 
itions of higher knowledge than science or learning can 
give, — voices which seem the presence of other spirits in 
ours ; which make us feel often that death, so far from re- 
moving our dear friends from us, brings them nearer to our 
souls, places them in our souls so that they cannot be lost ; 
— in all these wonderful ways we see dimly the unveiling 
of holy mysteries which the future is to fully open to us ; 
mysteries which we can even now, in our sublimer and ho- 
lier secret moments, feel trying to disclose themselves to us. 

But, my dearest A., what has possessed me to run on 
from Herr Driesbach into these spiritual flights, which, 
perhaps, you may not fancy, though I long to have you 
fancy them? 

FROM HIS DIARY. 

1843. 

On Monday morning the exercise with Dr. F. was, as 
usual, very uninteresting. Worse than all, I was the un- 
lucky means of setting on fire a hot controversy about tran- 
scendentalism. Out of these flames I keep myself always ; 
first, because I hate controversy, — something repels me 
from it and shuts my lips ; and second, because my highest 
intuitions are not things of argument. They find no weap- 
ons for self-defense. To have them opposed is as over- 
2 



18 



MEMOIR. 



whelming to me as to have it denied that the sun shines at 
this moment. Then, to hear the most serious truths treated 
with the levity and rough, proud uncharitableness of so- 
called common sense, — this is a profanation which shall 
not be prolonged by me. But the point was this : De 
Wette spoke of self-love. Dr. F. asked me what I thought 
of it. I told him that true self-love was the highest life ; 
that when we rise out of the individual self we become 
one with the universal self. This set the tongues of word- 
fighters in motion. J. R. thought the expression universal 
self a good one ; F. and B., and others, not. One thought 
it arrogant, and another would supply something else. And 
then arose a quarrel about natural instincts, one complete 
mass of misunderstanding throughout. It is in my power 
to see wherein the root of these contentions lies. It lies 
in words. I have been in a transcendental and in a com- 
mon sense life, and the meanings which each attaches to 
particular words are clear to me. I laid my head on my 
arms and tried not to hear the idle debate. 

In the afternoon G. F. read a fine dissertation on infi- 
delity. He took a liberal view, though rather severe on 
those liberals who differed from his own liberalism. I had 
prepared something which I did not read, the time was so 
far spent. Infidelity, I showed, was only insincerity ; that 
was all the definition I could give the word. No sincere 
man is an infidel. 

Among his papers of this period there is a bundle 
of MS. marked Private Phases of Feeling at the 
Divinity School. Transcendental Reveries; with a 
note appended, " This phase lasted but a short time ; 
yet a very effervescent state it was while it lasted." 
They embody devout meditations, mystic yearnings, 
the strivings of an earnest spirit after completer sense 
of reality, after more perfect union with God ; strug- 



MEMOIR. 



19 



gles with moods of self and doubt and coldness ; but 
through all an inmost faith that never deserts him. 
Among them is a paper of many sheets, in which he 
had written on one side of the page a series of facts 
and laws drawn from the reading of scientific books ; 
the corresponding column was to have been filled 
with their spiritual correspondences. He thinks some 
study of science might keep him from " breathing a 
too ethereal air." At this time he was a reader of 
Fenelon: I remember his telling me how much had 
been to him the essay, De V Existence de Dieu. 

1843. 

I once confounded truth with actuality, that is, I thought 
truth was in the changeable and transient forms, or rather 
in our ideas of those forms. 

I am troubled sometimes by nameless shadows of doubt 
that will press upon me, trying to convince my intellect 
that my heart has settled not into a real but an imagina- 
tive faith. My good Fenelon would tell me that this 
shows me I am not enough in love with God, that I re- 
serve myself through fear and shame. But, as with the 
struggling Moravian, " I aim at Thee, yet from Thee stray." 
I feel continually a want of insight — that great stone 
which stands between me and my Maker and Father, even 
in my most religious moments, if I dare call them so. But 
let my faith answer, — O that it might sincerely answer, — 
" When it is fit for thee thou shalt have it : now simply 
wait and be satisfied with letting the power of God work, 
in its seemingly formless, hidden way, its intended and 
certain effect." 

A man shall, must, be his own priest. But then he must 
be a true priest, not a slave nor a vulture. The true priest 
never speaks of his right, he only shows his might ; and that 
not as his own. And what is the true priest ? I know 
not in what can consist his sight, but in a larger share of 



20 



MEMOIR. 



that love and worship which are hidden in every soul, and 
which it is his work to reveal to men in themselves. 

SICKNESS. 

Thou, Lord, hast taken all my strength away, 

Both from the spirit and her faithful form 

The bodily instrument ; and now decay 

The powers that prompted fearlessness in storm, 

And energy, faith-kindled sight, whereby 

I felt as on a warm aspiring hill 

Watching the changing forms in earth and sky, 

Men and their works ; and from a higher Will 

Having interpretations, in a trance 

Of spirit, through their holiness and love. 

A spell of mystery was on me, and a sense 

As of a presence that with boundless rove 

Gave joys unasked, and worthy self-esteem. 

But Thou tak'st back " the visionary gleam " 

Into Thyself ; I strive in vain to see ; 

And till Thou come again, must keep me trustfully. 



. IV. 

In connection with these inward experiences we 
find him more than once speaking of feeble health. 
That may have been partly cause, partly result. Be- 
fore the end of his second year in the school a change 
of scene and occupation seemed needful. In May, 
1844, he set out on a voyage to Europe and a year's 
travel, in company with his townsman, Washington 
Very. New York, where they waited the sailing of 
the packet-ship, the Gladiator, in which they had 
taken passage, seemed to him "full of magnificence 
and of misery." The most beautiful thing he saw 



MEMOIR. 



21 



there was the old Park fountain, " pouring its pas- 
sionate streams aloft ; they call it the Maid of the 
Mist; I would rather call it the Love-Spring.'''' And 
the saddest thing was a poor, ragged girl, weeping 
under the pillars of a church. But his youthful op- 
timism suggests, " All that we can do is to feel that 
suffering is not what it seems ; and I believe that 
to these suffering thousands come moments of more 
beautiful enjoyment than are ever known to the 
stagnant lives of the rich." He sees also some paint- 
ings — a foretaste of European galleries. "A Ma- 
donna, especially, had a divine look of musing which 
seemed to penetrate the future, in the strong proph- 
ecy of a mother's heart." Another picture, " repre- 
senting a satyr bound by Apollo in the woods : a 
nymph seems to be asking wherefore this taking 
captive of nature by art." His new delight is crit- 
ical as well as appreciative ; " a head of St. John in 
Patmos, inspiration in the parted lips and in the 
large angelic eye : but what harmony has this lawyer- 
forehead with a contemplative, mystic spirit?" 

The Gladiator proved "a goodly bark," but not 
so large as his " creative fancy had painted her . . . 
and state-rooms are poor apologies for the name." 

From London he writes : — 

June 15, 1844. 

When I look back on that sea-life of three weeks, I 
count it among the grandest seasons of my life. The sea- 
life has been called monotonous, but I did not find it so. 
There is wonderful variety in the appearance of the waters. 
The waves, rising and falling, pass into the most beautiful 
and strange forms. . . . Now a high wave would sink 
softly down into a shell of the most delicate and dainty 
mould ; now the crests would look like sprinkled flower- 



22 



MEMOIR. 



beds ; and now the Nereides would scatter soft showers on 
each other, as wave met wave. The sea rose now in huge 
long walls behind, then passed down under us and lifted us 
high over itself, then smoothed away, and there lay behind 
us a long, long vale. Ships hung in the horizon every lit- 
tle while, vapor-like, and we watched hours to see if they 
were coming near. I thought and dreamed of their won- 
derful fearlessness. ... At night, especially, you cannot 
conceive the wonder of the scene. The wake of the ship, 
where the water by day is full of gurgling whirlpools clos- 
ing over the ship's cleft, so dark and gloomy, by night is 
a stream of the most beautiful milk-white, touched with a 
mysterious glory. Softer and brighter than the moonlight, 
even, it seems to come neither from within nor from with- 
out. All along this pure stream close in the black wails 
of the sea, which sends its circular waves through it, half- 
disturbing its beauty ; and all through this blackness rush 
millions on millions of torch-like fires, and here and there, 
down in the sky-depths, gleams dimly a snow-like meteor, 
then shoots away ; and out into the infinite darkness wan- 
der here and there these sparks, as into their home. . . . 
All the wonders of the heavens, too, are more wonderful 
here than where variety spreads all over the earth. . . . 
If I was ever despondent, there were letters and home to- 
kens, and deep, true books. You may be sure they helped 
me, and home would come to me in my dreams. . . . 

But I have not told you of our passengers ; eight we 
were, in the cabin, — one lady, two Englishmen, a Scotch- 
man, a German, and three Americans, besides the Irish 
captain who told stories to make us laugh, abused the poor 
black steward, and flirted a little with the lady. All we of 
stranger lands soon felt ourselves brothers ; and a merry 
time they had of it with shuffle-board, and card-playing, 
and scolding about national superiorities. They called me 
the " abstract man," because I sat apart so much. . . . 

There was a beautiful girl who had taken passage in the 



MEMOIR. 



23 



steerage, and used to sit all the time on deck, because she 
could not be with the gross company down there. I be- 
lieve M. had quite a platonic affection for her. She lived 
in Fareham, a little paradise just out of Portsmouth, and 
there we left her. I took much interest in her, for she 
seemed most open and warm-hearted. 

I will not try to describe the first vision of England: 
those white, bald cliffs, so battlement-like ; and the groves, 
and white houses imbedded in them which a glass showed 
us ; and the little stone town, with the castle beside it ; the 
stillness of the bay into which we glided ; the peaceful, 
pensive sun, setting over the low hills just closing us in ; 
and through all this twilight, spiritual scene, the thought 
of a new world we had found beyond the deep. . , . I 
watched most intently for the first man on shore. 

The beautiful English rural scenery ! The wonderfully 
tall, rich trees ; the little thatched, bird's-nest-like stone 
cottages, with their hedges of neatly trimmed buck-thorn, 
and profusion of trained flowers ; wild-flowers sprinkled 
everywhere among the grain, — purple, yellow, and in- 
tensest red ; fields of clover and poppies ; sheep multitudi- 
nous, and shepherdesses watching them ; women in broad 
bonnets, and their husbands and lovers making hay. . . . 

He soon falls in with the pest of poetic travelers, 
the professional guide : — 

Oh, what a torment one was in Winchester Cathedral, 
telling in a cold, stereotyped tone, whose monument was 
this and whose effigy that : — there among the heights 
and depths of arches old ! These people cannot be es- 
caped. I wonder if they would allow themselves to be 
paid for keeping away from a visitor who believes that 
cathedrals have somewhat to tell of themselves ? 

From Amsterdam he writes, " I am going to say a 
word in favor of these poor Dutch strivers with the 
sea," whom "poets and travelers like to laugh at." 



24 



MEMOIR. 



Amsterdam, June 22. 
I cannot walk about without seeing how this people are 
possessed with the one great idea of their life's being a 
struggle with ever-threatening power, and that power they 
have come at last to love. Hence they deal so in water ; 
women washing the middle of the streets, pouring on 
water, water, and sweeping still ; women washing clothes 
in the canals and ditches ; women sailing in flat boats, 
cleaning fish, holding markets . . . incapable of idleness. 
All this comes of the great sense of the ocean's presence 
and power. This feeling of the need of effort keeping 
them so full of unconquerable trust in effort. 

In the Dutch painting he finds the same pains- 
taking and elaborate effort, in its minute and per- 
fect reproduction of nature. " All this, you see, is 
of a piece with the whole life of this laboring race." 

In Antwerp he hears the music from its lofty 
fretted belfry, which " realized his ideas of chiming 
bells," of which he had dreamed years ago, when he 
sent to his mother the words of Moore's " Evening 
Bells," begging her to learn and sing them. He 
hopes that " before long America will spare some 
love for art, and such music as is good for gentle 
hearts, and needed by them too, will be attainable 
there." 

Up the Rhine to Heidelberg, where he found the 
students " most kindly attentive to strangers." And 
so through Switzerland. There his itinerary records 
all the magic names of places that kindle into flames 
the embers in an old traveler's memory. In October 
he is in Rome among the ruins : — 

Lonely, beautiful columns, broken arches of colossal 
aqueducts, mountains of mingled grass, earth, and cement, 
all apart from the peopled city, are about me. This 



MEMOIR. 



25 



morning I stood in the Coliseum ; height above height of 
broken, moss-covered, massy arches rose all around to the 
outermost wall, ragged, bold, and lone, row behind row ; 
the sunny green fields beyond. ... A temple beautiful as 
peace dedicated by its builders to barbarism. . . . Those 
precipitous, rent arches, are rough, almost terrible, but the 
wild flowers grow over them. There is something verily 
Alpine about them. The simplicity must needs be de- 
stroyed by those yellow stands called stations, representing 
in wretched pictures the successive scenes in the life of 
Christ. Everywhere in this country one meets such 
things, the ideas of which are so beautiful, but so mocked 
by the careless way of expressing them. We saw a few 
lines of soldiers marching through, and thought of the 
hosts of Rome. 

After pages of detail, he says : — 

But enough of Rome ; spare us, you will cry, such ram- 
bling map-work ; tell us of the Apennines, the paintings 
of Florence. 

The Apennines, stern wild crags, crowds of them ! we 
went up, up, up, and slept at the top. It was moonlight, 
and we sang together " Home, sweet home ! " you can judge 
with what feelings. Then, when we got into the supper 
room, we tried to grow jolly, by dancing, capering, and 
singing, till we were stopped by the coming of the maiden 
in the straw hat bringing the tea and bread. Were we to 
blame ? Poor wanderers ! Joy and sadness come very 
nigh each other in a wanderer's life. . . . But how beau- 
tiful even to sadness, that descent to Florence ; a rainbow 
over the mountains eastward ; the sun setting magnificently ; 
the still hill-sides covered with woods, gardens, and white 
villas, and ending in the loveliest plain. My journal is 
full of rhapsodies on the Val d'Arno. . . . 

Ah, Florence is the city of my love on this continent, 
after all ! The Val d'Arno, in which it lies, all girt about 



26 



MEMOIR. 



with Apennines, is the loveliest vale of lovely Italy. And 
what is great or good or beautiful that Florence does not 
tell of ? I looked for the gardens of the Medici, where the 
Platonist scholars gathered to revive the art and wisdom 
of old Greece on Tuscan ground. I found the villa some 
miles from the city, but the gardens for scholars and muses 
and artists are in her midst, and scattered along the still 
blue vale. The picture-gallery of the Pitti Palace is the 
best I have ever seen, except, perhaps, that at Bologna 
[he would not have made that exception later]. But the 
finest thing Florence has for me is the gardens of the Bo- 
boli, a true Academic grove. . . . Florence is full of priests 
as Rome, in the black cocked hat, the black gown, or the 
snuff-colored coarse frock of the Capuchins, tied with a 
rope, and topped by a falling cowl ; they are very dirty, 
though. The Dominicans and Au^ustines are cleaner and 
more gentlemanly looking, and the boys dressed in priests' 
garments and hats are very pleasant to see. Often at 
night goes by, with muffled tread, black veils over their 
faces, with small holes for seeing, bare-legged, and two by 
two, — the train of the Misericordia, bearing in a black, 
closed palanquin, some invalid to the hospital, perhaps 
some body to the tomb. 



V. 

In 1845 he is back again in the Divinity School, 
joining the class below that which he had first 
entered. As we had each been absent a year, we 
were again together. He returned much refreshed 
in mind and body, though he was never thoroughly 
free from the bodily ailments belonging to his bil- 
ious temperament. The mystical phase had ma- 
tured into a deep spiritual life, which gave to all his 
intellectual work a profounder quality that charac- 



MEMOIR. 



27 



terized him above the rest of us. The freedom with 
which he treated every subject had its root in this 
depth, and was never irreverent. It was simply his 
natural pathway to the truth he sought ; simply his 
native sincerity. His essays read before the school 
were often combated, and not always understood. 
I remember well the indignation I felt when, after a 
kindling paper of his, the honest but somewhat dry- 
minded professor began: "Mr. Johnson, I have lis- 
tened to your essay with the greatest pain. If you 
go on in that way, you will end in losing sight of all 
moral distinctions." Of course, it was an entire mis- 
understanding. Johnson, even in his most mystic, or 
in his most iconoclastic mood, never came near los- 
ing sight of moral distinctions. His natural mirth- 
fulness, which all through his life was so character- 
istic of him, was never inconsistent with this genuine 
seriousness, but only played over it in flashes of sun- 
shine. It was always innocent and hearty, never 
satirical or cynical ; simply a quick sense and lively 
enjoyment of things incongruous or ludicrous. 

He gave all due attention to the studies and work 
of the school. It was the custom at that time to 
" allow " the members of the senior class to preach 
in the neighboring churches as a " labor of love." 
They were to try their 'prentice hand, but without 
money and without price, so as not to interfere with 
the graduates of the school who were not yet " set- 
tled." So Johnson preached his first public sermon 
in the pulpit of his father's classmate, Dr. Lamson 
of Dedham. He soon after preached in the pulpit 
just vacated by Theodore Parker, his kinsman by 
marriage, in West Roxbury. 

Mr. Parker had for a year been preaching in Bos- 



28 



MEMOIR. 



ton on Sunday mornings, supplying as best he could 
the pulpit which he still held in West Roxbury, and 
preaching there himself in the afternoons. His name 
had by that time become a dread and a dislike to all 
conservative Unitarianism. He had first startled it 
by the sermon on " The Transient and Permanent in 
Christianity," preached at Mr. Shackford's ordination 
at South Boston ; which was followed up by the ser- 
mon on Jesus given at the " Thursday Lecture." As 
we read them now, in the midst of the larger toler- 
ance and broader theology, which we owe so largely 
to Parker himself, who bore the brunt of the battle 
— the sacrifice for our peace, taking into his breast 
the sheaf of theological spears, and making a way for 
pur liberty — it is difficult to understand the excite- 
ment which they made. The Unitarians, especially, 
were most eager to disclaim one of their own number 
who spoke of Jesus as a " Galilean youth," though he 
added a glowing rhetoric of praise of him, and who 
called the miracles of the Gospel " only poetry," com- 
paring them to the marvels related of Apollonius of 
Tyana, and to the labors of Hercules ; who even 
spoke of the " elements " of the communion as w bak- 
er's bread and grocer's wine." It was not always 
what he said, but also his way of saying it, that of- 
fended. He had little reverence for the reverences 
of others toward things which he did not think 
worthy of reverence. He believed wit and even sar- 
casm fair weapons as against superstitions. Kind- 
hearted as he was, and even . tenderly sensitive to 
sympathy, he was ready to meet attacks upon his 
positions, not like Emerson by ignoring them, but 
standing up in their defense and the defense of his 
right to hold them and still to call himself a Unita- 



MEMOIR. 29 

rian and a Christian, when this was denied. He 
fought a good fight — for he had sturdy Lexington 
blood in his veins. He even enjoyed the discomfit- 
ure of his foes under the sharp edge of his logic and 
the keen points of his wit. The Unitarians lost a 
grand opportunity. They might have said, 44 We dis- 
agree entirely with Mr. Parker upon some points 
which we think essential to Christianity, since we 
have always been told and we believe that it is a su- 
pernatural revelation, of whose truth miracles are the 
only possible attestation ; nevertheless, as we have al- 
ways claimed and proclaimed liberty of thought, so 
now we defend Mr. Parker in his liberty of thought 
and speech, not holding ourselves in any way respon- 
sible for what he may think or say. And as we have 
long declared that 4 righteousness is the ground of 
the Unitarian denomination,' and that 4 character is 
above creed,' and that 4 fidelity in duty, not accuracy 
of belief,' is the essential thing, so now we will not 
deny to Mr. Parker the Unitarian or the Christian 
name and fellowship." But they did not say that 
— with a few honorable exceptions ; and Parker was 
virtually excommunicated. 

It was in the midst of this state of things that 
Johnson finished his studies in the Divinity School 
and began to preach. His theological views were 
not then so clearly defined as at a later time, but he 
had no hesitation in placing himself by Mr. Parker's 
side. I do not think that it cost him any conscious 
effort of courage ; it was his natural and instinctive 
position ; but none the less it ivas brave. It lost him, 
and he knew that it must, the opportunity of preach- 
ing in the larger number of Unitarian pulpits. It 
made the way narrow for him into the exercise of 



30 



MEMOIR. 



his chosen profession. But his path was in every 
sense straight, and he did not hesitate. 

Mr. Parker himself did hesitate to involve any of 
the young ministers in his own unpopularity. 

TO THEODORE PARKER. 

1846. 

The hymn-book is so far advanced now that we must 
gather in all our materials as soon as possible. I must beg 
you once more to send some hymns of your own. Don't 
fear for the book ; your name is already in it, so that ob- 
jection must fall. The world is wiser than its priests are 
apt to be, and will take a good hymn from any good heart. 
Reform hymns will be a godsend. 

The hymn-book was the Book of Hymns which we 
had been engaged in compiling during the last six 
months in the leisure of Divinity School work. Our 
friend Frank Appleton, with whom we had at first 
been classmates in the school, had been settled over 
a church in Danvers, which used a very antiquated 
and to him unsatisfactory hymn-book. So we told 
him one day that we would make a new one for his 
use. Thus what might have seemed an audacity in 
two " unfledged " ministers came about very simply. 
The book was, however, first used by Edward Hale 
in the church at Worcester, over which he had re- 
cently been ordained. It was afterwards introduced 
by Mr. Parker in the Music Hall ; he was wont to 
call it the " Book of Sams." He liked that it recog- 
nized more than was then usual in the Unitarian 
hymn-books the idea that there is a Holy Spirit ; 
and that God is really present with and in the soul 
of man, a doctrine which Unitarianism then looked 
upon as somewhat fanatical. It contained also some 



MEMOIR. 



31 



anti-slavery hymns, by Higginson, Lowell, and Whit- 
tier. Its Christology was not unorthodox, though 
"humanitarian." There was a large number of 
hymns relating to Jesus, with the customary appel- 
lations of Lord, Saviour, and Redeemer, and his mir- 
acles were emphasized. I am not sure but this part 
was rather less the work of Johnson than of his col- 
laborator, of whom he was generally a little in ad- 
vance in his theology. 

TO HIS MOTHER. 

June, 1846. 

I send you some hymns this week, which I think you 

will like. If you think they would help the poor K 

girls, now that the first shock of their bereavement is over, 
perhaps you may like to send some of them, from me. 
You will find one of mine — No. 313. [This was "On- 
ward, Christian," from which the latter word was after- 
wards omitted, as being too narrow.] 

Very soon I shall come home " for good and all." Only 
a month more of this school : then I shall be yours till 
" settlement," dwelling at home ! 

I saw in a Salem paper that flimsy statement about S.'s 
preaching. 'The fact was S. prayed for " our country in 
this hour of her shame, that God would not permit her to 
carry sword and shackle into a sister land." Whereat a 

Mr. II suddenly left the church. . . . Tell father to 

look in the Courier of Wednesday, and read one of the 
finest poems that ever was written. I think it is by James 
R. Lowell. It is about the war. 

The war was the Mexican War then raging. It 
grew out of the annexation of Texas in the interests 
of the extension of slavery. And the poem was 
the first of the afterwards famous Biglow Papers. 
Johnson, himself, wrote at this time the verses — 



32 



MEMOIR. 



" Lord, once our faith in man no fear could move ; 
Now save it from despair ! " 

printed as No. 420 in the Booh of Hymns. To the 
theological questions then coming up, a new test of 
fidelity and new opportunity for sacrifices in behalf 
of freedom was beginning to be added in the way of 
the young preachers. Johnson was not found want- 
ing, as we shall see. 

He graduated from the school in July, 1846. His 
theme at the 44 Visitation," as it was then called, was 
of his own choosing, " wresting," he wrote, " the sub- 
ject given me by the Doctors to suit myself." It was 
" The Preacher's Duty in our Times ; " and we may 
be sure that it was treated with earnestness, frankness, 
and independence. He also wrote for the occasion 
the hymn, "God of the earnest heart." Another was 
by O. B. Frothingham, — 

" Thou Lord of hosts, whose guiding hand 
Hast brought us here, before thy face." 

And now came the period of 44 candidating." 
Johnson preached in various pulpits around Boston 
and elsewhere with more or less acceptance ; more, 
generally, with the younger people of the churches 
than with the elders. His sermons were touchstones, 
or Ithuriel spears, — and the public mind was sensi- 
tive. He was charged with being a 44 Deist." He 
was even charged, when he chanced to take a text 
from the Apocrypha, with 44 not finding the Bible 
good enough for him." He was charged with 44 bring- 
ing politics into the pulpit," an accusation at that 
time very common from the politics in the pews, 
which was set against any preaching of national 
righteousness in the pulpit. He was charged with 
" going about breaking up the churches," by those 



MEMOIR. 



33 



who could not see that he was truly an angel troub- 
ling the waters. 

He was one of the band of prophets in those days 
who might have said, as the prophet of old did to 
the Jewish King : "It is not I that trouble the peo- 
ple, it is thou that troublest the people." The oppo- 
sition to them was simply a part of that moral dis- 
ease, that cancer, whose roots were spreading through 
all the social, political, commercial, and ecclesiastical 
life of the land, and against which, only just in time 
for our salvation, were the vital powers aroused. 

To a newly-formed society at Harrison Square 
Johnson preached for considerably more than a year. 
Here he made some devoted friends. One of them 
writes of his preaching there : " I have never known 
one superior, and few equal, to Mr. Johnson in the 
impression he made of moral and spiritual elevation. 
Every intellectual perception, even the clearness and 
force of his diction, seemed to owe its vigorous and 
persuasive quality to a baptism in the fountain-head 
of moral rectitude. The moral sentiment to him 
was the very impress of God's face on the soul. It 
was the Immanuel, the God with us ; and when he 
uttered its prophecies or warnings, it was with the 
look and accent of one who believed that he had 
been with the Most High, and had His message to 
report ; which he did with the simplicity, the verac- 
ity, and sweet audacity of a child uttering his Fa- 
ther's words. All was the outcome of a soul living 
in the region of moral ideas." 

But all were not able or willing to hear the mes- 
sage. 



34 



MEMOIR. 



TO THE CHURCH COMMITTEE, HARRISON SQUARE. 

January, 1849. 

Gentlemen, — I have received your note of January 3, 
in which you request me u not to introduce any political 
subject into [my] discourses next Sunday." As I am not 
informed of any other special reason for this request, I can 
only regard it as an indication of a wish to interfere with 
the freedom of the pulpit. I am accustomed to preach upon 
such subjects as I deem it my duty, and in the performance 
of that I will not be interfered with. It rests with your- 
selves to say whether you will place in your pulpit a min- 
ister who will preach as he thinks right, or such an one as 
will preach only what you think right. In the one case 
you will probably have a man who is in earnest in the ser- 
vice of truth ; in the other case you will have one who con- 
sents to be merely your echo. I think you must have be- 
come already aware that I cannot suit you in the latter 
purpose. 

It was not my intention to preach on the application of 
Christianity to any special political subject [next Sunday], 
bat I reserve the right to do so, on all occasions. 

I do not wish, while preaching at the invitation of your 
committee, to interfere with your express request, and you 
will therefore not be surprised that I request you to make 
some other arrangement for the supply of your pulpit next 
Sunday. And I write immediately that you may have time 
to do so. 

In 1849 Johnson was called to know the grief of 
his mother's death. Those who were with him in 
that hushed chamber will never forget the fervor and 
tenderness of the prayer which flowed from his lips. 
To a friend's letter of sympathy he replies : — 

I cannot say what I would in answer to your words of 
real sympathy, spoken, too, from your own experience of 



MEMOIR. 



35 



suffering. . . . That void left in our path of life never again 
to be tilled here — we cannot yet conceive how deep it is. 
May we be made truly conscious of the unseen life, that this 
sorrow may be indeed, as it must have been intended, a 
message of good to us. . . . Had you known my mother 
longer you would have found her full of a tender inter- 
est in everything beautiful and pure, and of sympathy for 
every humane thought and purpose. 
♦ 

TO MISS LUCY OSGOOD. 

June 5, 1850. 

I write a line to tell you that there will be no services 
at the Harrison Square church next Sunday, nor probably 
Sunday after. What then will be done, it is impossible 
to say. At present, you see I am rusticating ; church 
troubles give us vacations at least, to say nothing of other 
blessings. 

TO MISS LUCY OSGOOD. 

July 18, 1850. 

I would fain hope that the age is not so far behindhand 
with the simplest Christian Truths as you say, in speaking 
of my sermon. People are beginning to feel the necessity 
of taking their stand, radically, for or against them. And 
I gather from my own experience every confidence that 
the work of purification is going on in society with a prog- 
ress never before dreamed of. Everywhere I find men 
and women ready for the work God calls them to do; and 
these are forcing the rest to a just knowledge of themselves, 
and to the conviction likewise that there is a spirit abroad 
which can neither be tamed nor conquered, cajoled nor re- 
strained, full of the perfect assurance of faith and power. 
Did you see the report of Mr. Choate's speech at the Story 
Association, where he says " the conscience has too long 
been allowed unbounded authority " (! !) ? Put that by the 
side of Mr. Webster's confession that he does not know 
where a " higher law " than the Constitution is to be found, 



36 



MEMOIR. 



and you have a capital illustration of the way in which the 
anti-slavery movement is forcing the evil spirit of politics 
in this nation out into the open day, in all its ugliness. 
Shall we not feel sure of its downfall being nigh ? 

TO HIS SISTER A. 

October, 1850. 

I find I have come away without a sermon suitable for 
preaching to the Neponset Christian Baptists, next Sunday 
p. m. Now I want you to pick out of the undecipherable 
heap under the book-case, the two sermons marked " Blind 
Guides " and " Giving the best to God." Send them to 
me by express. 

Jenny Lind is beyond description. She has not exactly 
handsome features, but an expression full of deep senti- 
ment, of sweetness, and of calm thoughtfulness. I can 
think of no other word than soulful ; sentimental as that 
sounds, it is the true word. There is a wonderfully quiet 
self-possession in all her movements which not the stormiest 
applause could disturb for a moment. Not the least sign of 
gratified vanity or sense of obligation to the audience. It 
seemed to me that she had the feeling that the voice and 
melody were not her own. When she came on the stage, 
it was in the quietest way, and as she stood with her head 
bent a little toward her notes, it seemed as though she was 
gathering all her heart and mind to meet the deep senti- 
ment of the piece. It was only then that there seemed 
any misgiving in her ; but it was reverence and not a fear 
of the public. The words began, — "I know that my 
Eedeemer liveth." I cannot describe the effect. When, 
at the close, her voice, — from the words " risen from the 
dead " to " the first fruits of them that sleep," — sank into 
a deep, low, pure tone, which moved through the stillness 
for what seemed a very long time, and then calmly soared 
out of the depths a little and passed away into the stillness, 
the effect was wonderful. There was a moment's pause of 



MEMOIR. 



37 



awe ; then there burst forth such a storm from all the mul- 
titude : it was as if the thought she had expressed silenced 
them for a moment, and then the womanly sweetness and 
holiness which had given the tones their power suddenly 
flashed upon them. I never before heard applause given 
to sacred music which did not shock me. It certainly did 
not then. 

The common talk about her innocent childlikeness does 
not do her justice. She is not childlike, but maidenly. 

TO S. L. IN PARIS. 

December 18, 1851. 

And you have seen Versailles, and the Madeleine, and 
Notre Dame, and the bookstalls : above all St. Germain 
l'Auxerrois, the church of mysterious depths and mazes, 
among whose silent cloisters I have wandered under the 
solemn light falling from transfigured saints and in the 
shadows of multitudinous arches and pillars — a true shrine 
of holiness and peace amid the surface-tumults of French 
life. And have you seen Rembrandt's picture of the Good 
Samaritan, in the Louvre ? Oppressed by Rubens' job-work 
and the stuff of French painters, I got much refreshment 
from that sweet and wonderful painting. Would it strike 
me now, I wonder, as it did then ? 

But let me talk about your Highland tour in England. 
The rain was certainly a damper. But for me De Quin- 
cey's book on the Lake Poets would have been a worse 
one. If his gossip be true, Wordsworth must have been a 
very conceited person. I have often thought I detected an 
unbounded complacency under the simplicity of his manner 
which once so enchanted me. I once had a sort of devo- 
tional feeling towards Wordsworth's poetry. But for the 
life of me I can't get any of it back again. [He did re- 
cover it later.] De Quincey is an opium-eater, however ; 
and what is significant, he is scarcely mentioned in 
Wordsworth's Memoirs, just published. About Cole- 



38 



MEMOIR. 



ridge, I am disposed to think De Quincey tells the 
facts as they are. But never have I found a writer who 
impressed me so profoundly with the authority and gran- 
deur of truth itself, as truth, — with a religious awe to- 
wards it, — as Coleridge in his ethical writings. Here, 
again, is the strange fact of the two lives between which 
men of genius hover, — possessed by the Spirit for a little 
while at a time, not possessing It steadfastly and organ- 
ically. But with all his keen critical dissecting De Quin- 
cey cannot throw a shade over the loveliness of Charles 
Lamb's self-denial, nor over the scrupulous uprightness of 
Southey's nature. 

Speaking of poetry, the " Golden Legend " pleases me 
exceedingly in parts. The working up of the plan don't 
quite suit my taste; but the idea is very beautiful, and dis- 
tinct passages are certainly among the finest in English 
poetry. Perhaps it will interest you to know that J. J. G. 
Wilkinson has published a new work on the Human Body, 
attempting to present it as the expression of a Divine Form, 
and to deduce from this ideal basis of the organization a 
theory of health and conduct which shall be absolute. It 
is full of striking new thoughts and of old thoughts strik- 
ingly presented. The conception is admirable, and a step 
in the right direction exactly ; but there is much that is 
vague, misty, and declamatory. What vitiates it, however, 
is a want of a broad humanity — a cold intellectualism, the 
besetting sin, indeed, of the Swedenborgians. They are 
complacent. Is it not because of the keen satisfaction 
there is in seeing through forms, in symbolizing, that they 
are so ? They leave all practical, hard moral effort for 
this aesthetic enjoyment. Goethe liked to speak of his 
acts as symbolic ; and for that reason, perhaps, he cared 
little to make them moral or humane. 

Theology I am diverging from, more and more every 
dav. I am convinced that my mission is to so about scat- 
tering the seeds of moral growth, — religious, too, I hope, 



MEMOIR. 



39 



but in application to the moral movements especially. I 
do not desire to sustain the churches, — false aggregations 
as they are for selfish and temporary purposes. I am con- 
tent to use them, for the time, as convenient openings for 
that sort of truth which, while it destroys them, will build 
up something better. Here, on one side of me, is our friend 

S , expelled, with his great family, from his society, for 

conscience' sake ; and on the other, , settled under 

bonds (willingly given) not to preach about Slavery. So 
it is everywhere in this day of trial and purgation for the 
churches. Everything in this crisis of American growth 
centres in the great conflict about this gigantic sin of 
Slavery. That is the battle-field on which the questions 
are all to be fought out. Of moral and spiritual and in- 
tellectual Freedom against the Absolutism of sect and 
party ; of Love against Mammon ; of Conscience against 
the State ; of Man against Majorities ; of Truth against 
Policy ; of God agaiust the Devil. It is really astonishing 
to see how everything that happens with us works di- 
rectly into this fermenting conflict. 

The land is reeling at this moment with enthusiasm for 
that magnificent character, Kossuth. He is a splendid em- 
bodiment of suffering and victory for the sake of Freedom. 
His command of our language is amazing, and his eloquence 
throws our orators (at any rate the political orators) into 
the blackest shade. 



VI. 

In 1853 Johnson, after having preached to a new 
society in Lynn from Sunday to Sunday for more 
than a year, was invited to take permanent charge 
of it. It had first been gathered as a Unitarian 
Society. But with that denomination he had never 
identified himself ; and, indeed, he was unwilling 



40 



MEMOIR. 



to take any sectarian name or connection. At his 
urgency, the original organization was given up, 
and the independent " Free Church " established in 
its place. " I mean to have that," he said, " or noth- 
ing." Nor was he willing to pass through any of the 
usual forms of " ordination." The inward call to 
preach, and the outward call of those who wished to 
hear, were to him sufficient seal of the ministry of re- 
ligion to which he had devoted himself. Nor did he 
ever " administer the sacraments." The religion that 
he preached was natural religion, as opposed alike to 
all ecclesiastical, special, and supernatural claims. It 
was simply another name for truth, freedom, piety, 
righteousness, love, as it might be given to him to 
see their various aspects and their applications to 
present needs. He preached but once on each Sun- 
day. Partly on that account he made his sermons 
longer than is usual ; but more because of a certain 
mental necessity which he always felt, to present with 
complete fullness whatever subject he took in hand. 
He had not the gift to touch only upon salient points, 
or to present a single aspect of a subject, or to put 
things in a way to catch the popular ear. This he 
knew very well ; but he was true to his own powers, 
and if he taxed the attention of his hearers, he also 
trained it. 

The length of his discourse was never a surface 
measure, nor was it any dilution of thought or diffuse- 
ness of words. The depth was equal to the fullness. 
There was never any mere rhetoric; always the note 
of entire sincerity, revealed in the very earnestness 
of his tones. These qualities marked his prayers like- 
wise ; they were the outpourings of a spirit rever- 
ently conscious of a Divine Presence, and commun- 



MEMOIR. 



41 



ing directly with the Infinite Life and Light. They 
were never " offered through " any intercessor, or in 
any other name than that of God and the human 
soul. They were the words of a child seeking his 
father; of human needs trusting the immediateness 
of the Divine supply. 

During all his ministry in Lynn, — which lasted 
through seventeen years, with one interval of a year, 
— he continued to live at his Salem home ; going over 
the five or six miles to his Sunday preaching, and at 
times during the week to visit the families of his 
charge. " I could not preach to my people," he said, 
" if I did not know them in their homes." One of his 
parishioners has told us what 4 4 a source of comfort 
and keen delight " his visits were, " always anticipated 
with so much pleasure." His Sundays were spent with 
the family of his friend James N. Buffum. " Lynn 
at this time" says one of his hearers, "contained 
less than twenty thousand people, and was noted for 
its general intelligence. A broadly democratic spirit 
prevailed, lacking somewhat in culture and rever- 
ence, but not inhospitable to the new movements of 
reform which came to disturb established ideas." 

Besides his regular pulpit work, — and his ser- 
mons were always carefully written out, — Johnson 
readily responded to other calls upon his thought 
and pen. Becoming early, and remaining to the end, 
deeply interested in the anti-slavery movement, he 
never joined any of the associations for its further- 
ance ; but he frequently lectured in their service in 
different places. He always distrusted his power to 
interest general audiences, and never trusted himself 
to speak in public without a manuscript. He threw 
his weight in the same way in the temperance move- 



42 



MEMOIR. 



ment, and in that for woman's enlarged freedom. 
When the Free Religious Association was formed, 
still abstaining from becoming a member of the or- 
ganization, he willingly addressed its meetings when 
called to do so ; and gave two or three lectures in the 
Horticultural Hall courses. In all these various lines 
he maintained the entirely individual and independ- 
ent position to which his nature impelled him ; always 
fearful of the tendency of organizations to hamper 
individual liberty. At any rate they were not for 
him, whatever benefits others might find in them. 
When The Radical magazine was established, he 
contributed an article to its first number ; and in 
successive volumes published papers among the most 
thoughtful and weighty ; notably a series upon the 
Foundations of Belief, in which he discussed the ques- 
tion of authority and freedom with great ability. 
I remember Mr. Martineau's telling me that he al- 

o 

ways read with great interest Johnson's papers in 
The Radical. 

I do not know just when the studies in the Orien- 
tal religions began. But in 1858 he came to Brook- 
lyn to give the course of six lectures which he had 
prepared, and had delivered in several places. I re- 
member the wonder and charm of these lectures of 
his on a subject then so very novel, and in which he 
was a pioneer ; and the delight which his recital of 
the poem beginning 

" The snow-flake that glistens at morn on Kailasa," 
which he had found in some missionary volume, gave. 
These lectures were the germ afterward developed 
in his great work, Oriental Religions, the studies for 
which occupied all the coming years. 

Besides these special studies, Johnson always found 



MEMOIR. 



43 



time for a large general reading — and I need not 
say a most intelligent one — of the important new 
books that appeared from time to time in literature, 
science, or theology. 

He was very fond of music ; and often availed him- 
self of the opportunities which Boston offers of hear- 
ing the symphonies and oratorios of the great mas- 
ters. A portrait of Beethoven hung upon his wall. 

During all these years of scholarly work added 
to the faithful labors of sermon writing, he was ac- 
customed to rest and refresh himself during the sum- 
mer by vacation visits or journeys in the country. 
The old family homestead in North Andover, and 
Lary's in Gorham, N. H., and Willoughby Lake, were 
favorite resting-places, where he enjoyed himself with 
his kindred and friends. He often went upon long 
foot journeys, alone or with a companion : in the 
Berkshire hills;- in Nova Scotia; in the Pennsylvania 
mountain and coal region ; in the Green Mountains, 
or the White Mountains, or the Katskills. The 
mountains were to him a passion. He always took 
with him his geological hammer, for to his poetic 
love of nature he added a scientific interest, and his 
cabinet of minerals was, I believe, an excellent one. 
Of farmers, stage-drivers, miners, this scholar readily 
made companions, and delighted them with his genial 
friendliness and animated talk as much as he did 
more educated associates. 

Over the young people within his circle in these 
years the influence of a spirit so elevated, so earnest, 
so serious. and yet so genial, of a mind so active and 
so well stored, was very strong. His friend Garrison 
has given us in the " Memorial " some hints of his 
power over young men : " Suggestions for reading 



44 



MEMOIR. 



or study, the freedom of his extensive library, the 
guidance of his cultivated taste, were offered freely. 
In his presence ignoble thoughts were impossible, 
and conversation held a fitting level. To be with him 
was to increase one's self-respect and resolution. 
Great things seemed easily possible under the stim- 
ulating influence of his abounding faith and spirit- 
ual insight." Nor was his influence less fine upon 
the young women of his acquaintance. To one of 
them I am indebted for this account of " a delight- 
ful fortnight passed in the summer of 1849 with 
Johnson and his sister at the old farm-house in North 
Andover : " — 

It was the beginning of a new era in life for some of the 
young girls who were there. Looking over an old journal 
of that year, I find : " How different is Samuel Johnson 
from any other young man I have ever met ; his whole being 
hears the stamp of purity, nobleness, and high resolve. 
As he reads to us in Fichte's ' Destination of Man ' and 
' Way of the Blessed Life,' how rich in possibilities life be- 
comes. Not of mere happiness, for he makes the renuncia- 
tion with which " the spirits bent their awful brows and 
said, — ' Content,' " in the ' Vision of Poets ' seem a better 
thing than any more earthly good. And yet how gay and 
bright he is ! With infinite trouble he catches ' old Peg,' 
who is usually allowed to roam at her own sweet will, and 
we flourish off on a day's picnic to the beautiful Ledge, or 
Den Rock, or Pomp's Pond. As we pile ourselves and our 
baskets into the wagon, how he jokes and makes merry, 
and cheers up Peg by assuring her that she is 4 only his 
own age, twenty-six.' And then he praises our table adorn- 
ments and the oak garlands we twine for our own hats 
and his. . . . 

" And how these places will be forever associated with 
his reading! One feels as if poetry had been only half 



MEMOIR. 



45 



poetry until now, read in his rich voice with such depth of 
feeling. We have had Chaucer, the Percy Ballads, Mackay 
(whose ' Golden City ' is a great favorite of his) ; both the 
Brownings ; and in prose, beside Fichte, Ruskin's ' Seven 
Lamps,' and much of Milton. He kindly interests himself 
in our German, and offers his books on our return to Sa- 
lem. How good of him thus to entertain us girls who can 
give him nothing in return ! And, best of all, he never 
sentimentalizes. If one could be foolish enough to do so 
about him, one could imagine him as uttering the rebuke 
of Protesilaus in Wordsworth's £ Laodamia,' — 

" 1 Learn by a mortal yearning to ascend 
Seeking a higher object.' 

We all dread to say good-by to dear old Andover ; but he 
consoles us by applying Keats's ' thing of beauty is a joy 
forever' to our good time here, and planning for many 
more such visits, ' until we shall be seventy,' he says." 

But I will not attempt further to summarize or to 
characterize Johnson's life and work in these seven- 
teen years in Lynn. Its varied sides will be best 
shown in his correspondence. And I am very glad 
to let him speak for himself. 

May 30, 1853. 

Lynn is doing hopefully. They tell me the whole sum 
requisite has been pledged, and the Free Church will be a 
fact. I held forth yesterday upon the principles thereof ; 
and the old society being disbanded, after service, the new 
one was formed, and goes into operation on my return in a 
few weeks. It is quite an experiment, nor do I feel very 
sanguine about my popular gifts, it must be confessed. 
Still I shall enter into the matter with some zeal, and 
surely the field is rich enough, if I have but the power 
to fill it. My announcement that women as well as men 
should be admitted to our pulpit caused a little flurry with 
a few. But they will soon get that over. 

I spent Wednesday afternoon and Saturday [of Anni- 



46 



MEMOIR. 



versary Week] in Boston ; and even in that short time was 
satiated and cloyed and deafened and confounded by talk ; 
and then went home and slept it off as I could. 

Do you attend the Hartford Convention to discuss the 
" origin and authority of the Bible " ? Henry C. Wright, 
Jos. Barker, and the rest are to have an infinite talk on 
that matter. I fear there will be more noise than scholar- 
ship about it. Could we have a series of carefully pre- 
pared essays on the subject by liberal thinkers and thor- 
ough scholars — that were something to be desired. 

TO MISS LUCY OSGOOD. 

September, 1853. 
Our services are held at Sagamore Hall. I shall be de- 
lighted to see the old friends whose familiar faces have 
greeted me in so many of the stations, or halting places, or 
oases, or whatever we may call them, of my sufficiently er- 
ratic and unsettled pulpit life. This time I can invite you 
to a church where people do not pay so much a seat ; but 
simply as much, or as little, as they please, that everybody 
may have the benefits of the services, whatever those bene- 
fits way be. Of course, having just started on this track, 
we cannot yet predict success. But the 'position I have al- 
ways held to be the really just and becoming one for a 
Christian church. And on stating that I could not continue 
with the society here any longer, except on the condition 
of their abandoning the pews and forming a free church, I 
found most of them willing to make the trial. We have no 
permanent organization, and are simply united for a season 
to open to the public, freely, the best truth we can arrive 
at, depending entirely on the voluntary contributions of 
those who shall make a regular practice of coming for such 
means as will enable us to go on. I am not even a settled 
minister (though I hear you feared my falling away from 
my first faith) in any sense which implies the inability to 
leave at any moment. I simply fill the desk of a free 
church, and make as good a friend as I can to the people 



MEMOIR. 



47 



who come to me. So much about myself. Though I 
should like to talk with you about free churches, from 
which I hope great things. 

to s. L. 

January, 1854. 

As for Lynn, we go on as well as could be desired, ex- 
cept in the item of funds. But there is no lack of hearers 
and attentive ones. My little hall is crowded every Sun- 
day night. I have been putting the Oriental Lectures into 
a more sermon ic form, to awake, if possible, some desire 
for a broader culture in the people. They are mostly im- 
mersed in business, and there are positively no literary ad- 
vantages. 

November, 1854. 

I am now engaged every Monday evening, in lecturing 
at Watertown ; my seven plagues of Egypt, or golden can- 
dlesticks, or whatever else, — the Eastern Lectures. 

March, 1854. 

My plans for the summer are not yet matured, but I 
find them gravitating to the Katskills as by instinct. I 
think we must go there again. Else why the Mandingo ? 

The Nebraska question seems to have stirred us up. I 
should hope the reaction might come to something, if the 
bill passes. If it fails, the North will claim the victory and 
generously grant a compromise and a suspension of agita- 
tion. At least I fear so. We can't afford to be mollified 
just now. But what a Nemesis is Slavery, that it should 
be putting away with its own hands the foundations of its 
own strength, and destroying that " sacredness of compro-; 
mises " which has stood in the way of moral insight and 
practical fidelity ever since the Constitution was made. 

[In April, 1853, was passed in Congress, after four 
months' debate, and against strong opposition, the Bill for 
organizing Nebraska Territory, repealing the " Missouri 
Compromise " of 1820, which had forbidden slavery north 



48 



MEMOIR. 



of 36° 30' of latitude. Charles Sumner called it "at once 
the worst and the best bill on which Congress ever acted : 
the worst, inasmuch as it is a present victory for slavery ; 
the best, for it prepares the way for that ' all hail hereafter,' 
when slavery must disappear." In the following June a 
fugitive slave was seized in Boston and sent back into 
slavery, amid an intense popular excitement.] 

TO MISS LUCT OSGOOD. 

June 7, 1854. 

Dear Friend, — I believe I am bound to let you know 
that, in consequence of this atrocious business in Boston, 
Parker is unable to exchange with me next Sunday, accord- 
ing to agreement. He will preach at home, I presume, for 
some Sundays to come. 

How impossible to conceive what issues will come of 
things, in which such heart-sickening tragedies as these are 
enacted ! At present, things look dark enough, and even 
threaten the alternative of slavery in New England or a 
civil war. Yet this shock was certainly what we needed, 
and there may come a saving revolution in public sentiment 
at once. Of one thing I should think our best people must 
have become convinced at last, that there can be no union 
between slavery and freedom, and that dissolution of a so- 
called " Union," which bears such fruits as these, is the 
pressing necessity of the time. What a moment for find- 
ing a " North " united, earnest, and free. 

TO R. H. MANNING. 

July, 1854 

Tell Mrs. M that I was utterly unable, in the terri- 
ble excitement of that Friday in Boston, to get away from 
Court Square until so late, that the hour and my own ex- 
hausted condition made it impossible to call on her. ... I 
send you a sermon about that " Bad Friday." Our faith 
in the old Bay State is receiving the severest shock it ever 
felt. I do not know what is to come of the miserable party- 



MEMOIR. 



49 



spirit and indifference which are thwarting every effort to 
unite the people here to defend State rights and liberties. 
We can only hope for the best ; knowing that the end must 
be good, whatever comes between. 

TO THEODORE PARKER. 

September 20, 1854. 
Understand me : my object is not to preach for you, but 
to have you preach for me. . . . For the sake of having 
you at Lynn I had even made up my mind to inflict myself 
on the Music Hall-ers ; now, that consideration being gone, 
I infinitely prefer that somebody else should fill your place. 

TO S. L. 

January, 1855. 

As to the Lectures [on Oriental Religions] can you get 
enough tickets taken to save them from becoming a kind of 
private or parlor readings, a thing whereof my native mod- 
esty has an invincible horror ? Do you know anything about 
the Lectures ? Have you heard the testimony of any com- 
petent person who has listened to them? I don't ask in 
order to make up my own mind about them of course, but 
in order that you and your friends may not be deceived, 
getting something very different from what you expected. 

[A pedestrian tour was made through the Berkshire hills 
in August.] 

I walked about three hundred miles, and found, espe- 
cially in the southwest corner of Massachusetts, some of the 
finest scenery I ever saw. Hitchcock's Geological Report 
had prepared me for something wonderful, but the Bash 
Bish gorge and the Taghkanic Mountain, or " Dome," 
were beyond all expectation. 

Have you read Kingsley's little sea-shore book ? [ Glau- 
cus.~] How charming it is ; worth fifty barbarian extrava- 
gances like Amyas Leir/h, I think. 

I am rather interested just now in the controversy going 
on in Germany between Baur, Hilgenfeld, and Hase. The 
4 



50 



MEMOIR. 



Tubingen School are getting a new chance to explain them- 
selves. 

October 18, 1855. 
I have delayed writing for ,two reasons : first, sickness 
for two or three weeks past, in fact almost ever since I got 
back from my journey in August ; and, second, because I 
was hoping something would turn up to enable me to go 
with you to Niagara in October. But a fatality seems to 
forbid. 

Montpelier, Vt., July, 1856. 
I have only the smallest possible India-rubber-cloth bag 
strapped over my shoulder, a folded umbrella in it. I am 
doing gloriously in the grandest scenery, with some rough 
work, to be sure, but going at the rate of some eighteen to 
twenty-four miles a day ; — not hurrying, but sauntering 
along, stopping under trees and at farm-houses, taking sun 
and shower as they come, and finding all things good, only 
wishing you were- with me. If you could be at Caldwell 
on Saturday, and go back with me, and so to Willoughby, I 
should indeed rejoice. 

May 7, 1857. 

How have I failed of writing ? Simply because I have 
been miserably unwell this whole spring, have written to 
nobody, and done nothing but mope through the absolutely 
necessary tasks. . . . Remember that thou also hast a liver, 
that bile is a demon, and consider that if friendly charity 
doth not mightily widen her folds by reason of it, we are 
of all men most miserable. I have read nothing, as I have 
written nothing, and am just beginning to stir, these fine 
spring days. I have had to put aside invitations to lecture, 
and spend my time in the wretched business of taking care 
of myself. But I hope better things now. 

And so your chapel is to be ! This is the second good 
word that has come this early May-time. The other is 
Wasson's call to Worcester. ... I must tell you of T. T. 
Stone's magnificent Lectures on English Literature we are 



MEMOIR. 



51 



hearing in Salem. He takes the tale, the drama, the alle- 
gory, the essay, the song, the sermon, traces them through all 
their forms back to the religious sentiment, and views them 
as spiritualities, forms of the Divine in man. Think what 
a theme, and how Stone would treat it, and add an intelli- 
gibility for the common mind you would not expect ! They 
are wonderful for deep, mystical philosophy and critical 
analysis alike, full of sweetness and holiness, and hold you 
upon heights of vision from the beginning to the end. They 
are the most completely original, suggestive, and fascinating, 

I ever heard. Tell M and the others that this is the 

course of lectures to be listened to by all thoughtful persons 
in the land. Let this be the first series in the Chapel. 

January 6, 1858. 

Did but the " hard times " permit ! We seem to be get- 
ting over the immediate panic better than was expected. 
We are recovering too fast, I fear, to learn the lesson. But 
when the extended notes fall due doubtless there will be 
another crash. With all the trouble, how grand it is to 
see the complexity of business unraveled so and its secrets 
laid bare, and its conceit taken out of it, and the honest 
man proved the wiser and the indispensable man ! . . . 
How much comfort you will take in that same humble man- 
ger [the New Chapel] and to have escaped the bleak wastes 
of the Athenaeum, where you were lost, and to gather your 
flock under your eye and hand. I long to find my way 
there. They tell me in Lynn that the Free Church would 
grow more, if we had a more commodious hall. I have 
often thought of the Brooklyn Athenaeum, and said, " Is a 
boy likely to grow faster for wearing man's clothes ? " 
Doubtless a better hall would give an air of f< respectabil- 
ity " which a Free Church lacks (of itself) in the eye of the 
public generally. Foregleams of such a migration occa- 
sionally shoot across the day and may come to something. 

Are you not glad to see the new Monthly — the Atlantic ? 
The first number disappointed me in respect of earnestness 



52 



MEMOIR. 



and scholarship. But I think we may expect the best 
things from the way the work goes on. The grand position 
it has taken politically will secure it the upward track in 
every form of literature. What a step to put itself free 
from toadyism to slavery ! Emerson's pieces and the arti- 
cle on Carlyle almost promise that we are to have " the 
Dial with a beard." [This was Theodore Parker's charac- 
terization of the Massachusetts Quarterly."] 

I have been reading Agassiz's Contributions. He seems 
to be laying foundations for an immense structure. And, 
to judge from the introductory chapters on the grand gen- 
eral relations of animals and their classification, we are to 
have a complete system of natural history developed. There 
is a perfectly encyclopedic experience hinted and etched 
out in these chapters. Whether the point he elaborates is 
worth the pains is a question, I think. It will take more 
than Agassiz to prove that our classifications are God's act- 
ual thinking, rather than man's conception of the universe. 
This anthropomorphism, I confess, shocks me. I like my 
old Brahmins better who only said, God is. As I don't be- 
lieve that God talks Hebrew, or sent Cotton Mather's " spe- 
cial Providences," so I don't believe He thinks genera and 
species as we do. Probably we shall find out how things 
stand in " God's mind " when the lesser circle contains 
the greater. But Agassiz's purpose is good if his meta- 
physics are shallow. And his proofs that animal life could 
not have sprung from physical causes, in the ordinary sense, 
are full of fine suggestions. 

You must read [O. B. Frothingham's] review of Baur's 
works, in the last Christian Examiner. It is a fine state- 
ment ; but why " hope that the school may not triumph " ? 
I find my study of Baur has given me no such anxieties. 
Nor do I understand how, after so fair and impressive an 
exposition of Baur's historical criticism, he can lament that 
it does not recognize the personal influence and character 
of Jesus. But, as a statement of the position of the Tubin- 



MEMOIR. 



53 



gen school, it is admirable. And to see it in the Exam- 
iner is surely a hopeful sign. 

Have you done anything toward preparing to improve 
the Book of Hymns ? I have not directly, but am contin- 
ually on the point of setting about it. Nothing but want 
of leisure prevents. Do you find it still represents your 
theological stand-point? I shudder to say that there are 
almost a half hundred hymns in that book which my tongue 
refuses to utter. The hymns about Jesus, especially, look 
weaker and thinner every year. Still, on the whole, I 
think it the best groundwork for the coming Hymn-Book. 

In February he sends a hymn, for the dedication 
of New Chapel, — 

" To Light that shines in stars and souls, 
To Law that rounds the world with calm." 

I think you do well to conduct the services at the Dedi- 
cation yourself. I like the simplicity and self-reliance of 
the method. It has a sturdy look as if you meant the 
movement should go on its own feet, and live by its own 
worth. . . . You may set me down for April 1st, though 
it be Fool's-day ; and the lecture on Beauty you shall 
have, though it look a little musty. 

April 12, 1858. 

I passed a sufficiently uncomfortable night on board the 
boat. I don't know whether anything less than the kind- 
ness and hospitality of so many friends in New York and 
Brooklyn, and the pleasure of being with you once a year 
at least, would induce me to pay such a price as this atro- 
cious steaming and earring to Gotham and back. How- 
ever it always does me great good to make such a visit. 
We suburbans of the Massachusetts Bay get a sense of ex- 
pansion through the great business life of New York ; and 
what is better still, lose ourselves in the flood of human ex- 
istence that sweeps through the monstrous Broadway ar- 
tery. Anything that will help one lose himself in an im- 



54 



MEMOIR. 



measurable unknown is of infinite service. Intellectual 
and moral radicalism, to be sure, is comparatively wanting 
there ; and, so far as the masses are concerned, you feel 
that you are to begin some ways back to prepare them for 
your best thought, and put them into a position where they 
can learn to think and act freely. But then, on the other 
hand, it does one good to escape this fever of thought, this 
tremendous drain on the moral consciousness and the power 
of aspiration; this immense logical requirement of the moral 
idea, when so fully comprehended as it is here, — even 
though one falls into the current of another fever, even the 
business fever. 

April 12, 1858. 

I don't know whether I told you how very much I en- 
joyed preaching in Brooklyn ; the whole tone and sur- 
rounding, the spirit I saw in the people, and the promise, 
the whole aspect of things gave, that you had fairly started 
on the work that fairly belongs to you, and in which you 
will effect what is so much needed — the putting of the 
religious sentiment into the free thought that is starting 
up with prodigious energy. 

I heard a good thing of Emerson. He and Parker were 

together at a party, when D came up, and, ignoring 

Parker, addressed himself to Emerson. When he turned 
away, Emerson broke out, — " One might conceive of ignor- 
ing the Boston ministers generally, but to ignore one of 
the Lord's officials ! " Have you seen Parker on the Re- 
vivals ? 

September 24, 1858. 
I was entirely content with the good people of the Prov- 
ince [Nova Scotia], with whom I found myself perfectly at 
home in farm-houses, wayside inns, academical and private 
cabinets, etc. I spent many weeks clambering about the 
cliffs of the Basin of Minas, tracking wonderful ranges of 
bluffs, carved and weather-colored and ripple-marked and 
heaved aloft and broken down in all mysterious ways; 



MEMOIR. 



55 



pounding rocks for fossils and poking fissures and air-bub- 
bles of venerable lavas to find minerals ; yachting in great 
waters of sixty feet tide, where the spirits in the air and 
under the keel were more shifty and wizard than those the 
Ancient Mariner had to encounter ; groping about in mines 
two hundred feet under ground ; and marveling greatly at 
the exposures of the old coal formation no less than three 
miles in thickness, telling the geological of such a lapse of 
time as suggests the old Buddhists who counted by Kalpas 
instead of years. Altogether Nova Scotia is a wonderful 
region, with any amount of capacity for wild adventure 
and search for beauty. Grand Pre is lovely, with its pleas- 
ant round knolls and broad green meadows, rimmed in by 
the old dikes from the monstrous tides, and waving with 
noble harvests as for a hundred years. Here are old French 
cellars, orchards, roads ; but the families are all gone, and 
there seems to be very little sympathy for them among the 
people. I think these Nova Scotians have the freest gov- 
ernment in the world, though scarcely able to appreciate 
their advantages ; no public schools, only one railroad, and 
a deal of theological bigotry, which stands in the way of 
education. But no stock could be fuller of the love of lib- 
erty ; and no race of better behavior or more plain and con- 
tented habits. They love England, and are wise enough not 
to believe in Annexation to American Manifest Destiny. 

October 26, 1858. 
Dear S., — I have just preached a sermon at Parker's 

which , with best intentions doubtless, intends, wholly 

against my wishes of course, to report for the Christian 
Inquirer. You see at once the peril. It is n't a pleasant 

prospect to be interpreted to the public by . Can't 

you at least see that I am not made to say anything very 
absurd? My sermon was theologically radical, as you 
may suppose, being an attempt to state the foundations of 
religious faith ; laying them in the spiritual constitution of 



56 



MEMOIR. 



man, rather than in the Bible, the official Jesus, or the 
Creeds ; and affirming that, by the very conditions of his- 
torical growth, this age could see more of the meaning of 
the grand truths of Christianity than Jesus himself. But 
I, of course, didn't make any such foolish statement as 
that Swedenborg had more inspiration than Jesus, which 
was 's coarse impression, as he informed me. 

December, 1858. 

The sermon [at the Unitarian Convention] was a feeble 
attempt to put together the official Jesus, as fullness of 
God made flesh, with the historical idea of Christianity as a 
natural growth, a link in the chain of human development ; 
an attempt wherein, of course the genuine force of both 
doctrines was utterly whiffled away. 

Have you read Wasson's noble article on Sacrifice in 
the Christian Examiner ; and the " All 's Well " in the 
Atlantic ? I hardly know where we shall find anything 
so jubilant and altogether adequate as this last. It is like 
the finest things in Vaughan and Herbert, only on a higher 
plane. 

I am reading [Carlyle's] Frederic. Refreshingly ear- 
nest, of course ; severe often to the point of sublimity ; in- 
conceivably worked out to the minutest details of fact; 
petulant, savage often ; unmerciful as usual to the weak ; 
with all the faults and all the splendors and all the noble- 
nesses of Carlyle. To offset that, I have been hearing five 
lectures from Emerson. " Self-possession " is especially 
fine. You should get him to give you that in Brooklyn. 

My reading is miscellaneous just now : Eenan's Lan- 
gues Semitiques, Livingstone's Africa, Koeppen's Buddha, 
Jewish Literature, Life of J. Q. Adams, etc. Free Church 
about as usual ; a little pushed for funds, many disposed 
to let a few pay more than their share, the usual difficul- 



MEMOIR. 



57 



ties which beset a free church. Still I think they will 
weather the hard times ; and they are kind, tolerant, and 
appreciative as ever. 

February 28, 1859. 

Wasson is better. Good news from Parker, too ; I hope 
significant of real restoration. He has stood the severe 
sea-sickness so well that he is in as good way as when he 
left New York. 

I lectured at Concord last week and had a charming time, 
seeing Emerson, Sanborn, Thoreau, Mr. Ripley, etc. Also 
at Parker's on the Sunday subsequent, where there is no 
diminution of interest in continuing the services since his 

departure. Think of the absurdity, however of 's 

[an evangelical Unitarian] going there and pretending that 
it was a great piece of bravery and liberality in him ! 

June 1, 1859. 

I can't tell you how sorry I was to be obliged to refuse 
going to Brooklyn for you [on exchange]. . . . Whom do 
you think appeared on Saturday night at Lynn, and whom 
do you suppose you would have had to introduce, as I did, 
to a meeting in Sagamore Hall, had you been in my place, 
— but old Osawatomie Brown of Kansas, who was there to 
tell his story of that noble exodus of slaves which he car- 
ried through in triumph last winter. He is a genuine old 
Revolutionist, and believes with all his soul and all his 
life that slavery has no rights upon the earth. There 
seems to be not a tinge of revenge, and anything but a dis- 
position to shed blood, in this old warrior, though he has 
terribly suffered from slavery, one son being murdered by 
the border-ruffians and another driven mad from cruelties 
inflicted by them. He says he has a call to kindle a fire 
in their rear in Missouri itself ; and the terror he inspires 
may be judged from the fact that a price of three thousand 
dollars is set on his head by Missouri, and two hundred and 
fifty dollars by Buchanan. Methods differ, but such self- 



58 



MEMOIR. 



sacrifice and practical devotion to the slave is exceedingly 
refreshing in these days. He is after aid in carrying on 
his plans of delivering the slaves. 

October 17, 1859. 

" When, oh when, shall we draw near " to each other to 
the fulfillment of the cherished purpose of perfecting 
the hymn-book ? I write now to ask if you can send me 
five of your vesper-books. Do not flatter yourself that you 
have made a convert to your celestial methods of "Art 
devoted to Religion," or that little bare Sagamore Hall 
is about trying to vie with New Chapel in aesthetic things. 
I only want the book for the chants, which I desire my 
choir to have the benefit of. 

Try the Vespers and do what you can with them. While 
you lead them I do not fear the coming in of pyx and chasu- 
ble. I recognize all that charms you, and know you will 
not let it degenerate into formalism. I especially recognize 
the need of nobler, purer music in our religious service, of 
everything which can broaden, refine, yes, exhilarate the 
religious sentiment. 

All this work at last told upon Johnson's constitu- 
tion, never quite robust. Something more was needed 
of rest and restoration than the summer vacations 
and tours afforded. I was fortunate enough to per- 
suade him to accompany me on a trip to Europe, on 
which I was setting out. As he felt the need of at 
least a year's absence from his work, he thought right 
to offer his resignation in the following letter : — 

TO THE CONGREGATION OP THE FREE CHURCH. 

Brooklyn, N. Y., March 9, 1860. 
Dear Friends, — It was with great sorrow that I felt 
compelled, a short time since, to seek a respite from my 
labors in Lynn. Finding, as I did in these labors, the high- 



MEMOIR. 



59 



est happiness of my life, I could not easily bring myself to 
accept the necessity for even a brief intermission of them. 
For eight years I have been your minister, speaking to you 
as unreservedly as to my own soul of the great concerns of 
piety, knowledge, and love, according to the measure of my 
progress therein from week to week, and from year to year. 
With your families I have formed ties of sympathy which 
cannot be broken, and which have helped me in my spirit- 
ual and moral needs more than I can tell. You have ever 
accorded to my words such earnest and thoughtful attention 
as is rarely found even in our New England congregations. 
Through many discouragements you have maintained a free 
pulpit, wherein all thought which promised well for hu- 
manity has received a cordial welcome ; you have been 
willing to hear and prove all things ; in large degree also, 
I think, sought to hold fast what is good. To me your kind 
hospitalities have been incessant, and all my deficiencies 
have been affectionately covered by your recognition of the 
great principles of love and liberty which we were set to 
maintain. . . . 

But though gaining strength I am more and more con- 
vinced that I now need a much longer period than I had 
supposed, certainly not less than six or eight months, of en- 
tire freedom from my charge. 

I wish you to understand that while I do not seek to dis- 
solve my connection with a body of men and women so 
fully answering to my needs and aims, I would have you 
feel at perfect liberty, under these circumstances, to avail 
yourselves permanently of any services which you may 
judge suited to your own. 

You will understand, I am sure, that this step is not 
taken without great reluctance, and that it proceeds only 
from a well-considered sense of duty to you and to myself. 
For it is surely a time when no man, who holds in trust 
the principles of civil, political, and religious liberty has a 
right to be off his post of influence, while he has power to 



60 



MEMOIR. 



hold it. Who shall dare be silent even for a day, while 
the nation is persecuting its prophets, and sending its saints 
to the scaffold, while the public conscience seems to be 
drugged and stifled almost beyond rousing, and to look 
with a kind of vacant unconcern upon insidious processes 
by which the national legislature is being turned into a 
court of inquisitorial powers, and the national judiciary 
into mere machinery for the swift destruction of inaliena- 
ble liberties ! I have much more to say of these things, 
whereof I have already said so much. 

November 26, 1860. 
The Free Church people were rather taken by surprise, but 
retained sufficient presence of mind to pass very kind and 
regretful resolutions, accepting my resignation, and trust- 
ing to my return among them. Parker is actually coming 
home in a month. I fear the consequences to him ; I fear 
also tbat it indicates his health to be unimproved. 



VII. 

In the early summer of 1860, we took passage for 
Liverpool. After a few days in that city and in Lon- 
don we ran over to the Isle of Wight, spending a week 
in walking through that charming epitome of English 
rural scenery. Then hastening through Paris to 
Switzerland, we spent two months there, half in foot- 
travel. We got our first exciting vision of the snow 
mountains, after two or three days' waiting, from the 
Enge, just outside of Bern. There, beyond the nearer 
hills and against the far sky, as the reluctant mists 
lifted, we saw the marvelous reach of the Bernese 
Alps ; peak after peak moulded, as it seemed, of some 
celestial substance of dazzling glory and soft blue 
shadow ; in the centre the Jungfrau, lifted like the 



MEMOIR. 



61 



" great white throne " of the Apocalypse. Toward 
those hills we set out in the morning, and at evening 
saw them flush into a passionate glow and then fade 
into a pallor " beyond death " my companion said. 
A month's foot-travel followed through the changing 
grandeur and beauty, whiteness and verdure, of that 
wonderful land, where all possible charms of nature 
are concentrated. We walked, I remember, with 
easy independence, now one far ahead and now the 
other, as we stopped, now to sketch — Johnson's 
sketches, though unskilled, always caught the char- 
acteristic forms — now to ask "how far" of some 
short brown-coated peasant, or to return the greeting 
of some brown-faced boy lifting his hat, or to buy 
berries or Alp-roses of some sweet demure-faced little 
girl ; or to throw ourselves tired upon the turf, till 
roused by the organ-like-echoes of an Alp-horn. The 
month of October we spent at Glion, high up above 
Montreux, on the shores of the Lake of Geneva, — 
so pleasantly pictured in Matthew Arnold's Ober- 
mann Once More. There we stayed, — intercalating 
a trip to Chamounix, where I had the delight, waking 
early one morning, to see from my window, in the 
gray half -dawn, the morning -star lingering above 
the "awful front" of Mont Blanc — till the maples 
turned to gold, and the grapes to purple, and the au- 
tumn mists began to warn us toward Italy. Going 
by Nismes and Marseilles to Nice, we spent there a 
month. There, shut into the house by constant rains, 
we set to work upon arranging our materials for the 
Hymns of the Spirit, which we thought it was high 
time should replace the out-grown Book of Hymns, 
and which was published after our return, in 1864. 
There, in a damp chamber of the " Pension Besson," 



62 



MEMOIR. 



Johnson wrote the hymns, " City of God how broad 
and far " (637) ; " The Will divine that woke a wait- 
ing time " (657) ; and, I think, " Life of Ages, richly 
poured" (633), which last it seems to me must take 
the place in the new church which Toplady's " Rock 
of Ages " holds in the old. The winter we passed 
in Florence, taking rooms in the Casa Pini, far down 
the Lung' Arno. Romola was not then written, 
but all the places mentioned in it became very famil- 
iar to our feet. Many hours, of course, were spent in 
the galleries of the Uffizii, the Pitti and Academia. 
Andrea del Sarto with his fine human quality, and 
Fra Angelico with his seraphic sweetness, grew very 
attractive to us ; and Masaccio at the Carmine. I 
remember a very delicate criticism of Johnson's upon 
a "Last Supper" of Andrea's in an old convent out- 
side of the city. He saw that the painter had made 
Jesus, in that moment of desolation, involuntarily put 
his hand upon that of the beloved disciple who was 
next to him, — a fine touch of human feeling. 

We visited the studios of the American sculptors 
then living in Florence — Powers, Hart, and Jack- 
son. We looked up at Casa Guidi windows. We 
" watched the sunsets from the Arno bridges " far 
over the jasper and wine-purple hills. We learned 
to love the sober beauty of the Cathedral's nave, and 
the jeweled windows of its choir, where in the shadow 
behind the altar stands Buonarotti's wonderful group 
of grief. Pleasant in our ears was the perpetual 
musical jangle of the convent bells, varied now and 
then by the " solemn roar " of the Misericordia. We 
took long rambles to Fiesole, to Bellosguardo, to 
Galileo's tower, and Monte Oliveto. We saw from 
the cypresses of the Boboli Gardens the " bright vig- 



MEMOIR. 



63 



nettes of tower and Duomo sunny sweet " : and gath- 
ered there ivies to plant on Theodore Parker's grave 
in the little Protestant Cemetery. Spring came, the 
great purple and red anemones bloomed in those 
gardens, and the primroses in the Cascine. And then 
we parted ; I to go south to Rome and Naples, he to 
return homeward through Germany. 

TO HIS SISTER K. 

Bern, August 7, 1860. 
I must take you with me to the Isle of Wight and on a de- 
lightful walk of a week among the villages and the downs 
of that most lovely and quiet region. As it is but about 
twenty miles long by nine or ten broad, the tour of it is 
easily made in that pleasant way of short walks and leisurely 
rests, which is the charm of traveling, without permitting 
any uncomfortable feeling of slow progress. One gets on 
quite as fast as he wishes to the end of his little island 
circuit, and at every few miles is a pleasant old church in 
the Norman or the early English style, with its low tower, 
its simple roof, its slender windows and round arches, all 
clothed with ivy and flowers as with a garment of immortal 
life, and its old monuments within and without written in 
stone and in story. Close by, a rectory embosomed in trees 
and gardens, and always a pretty specimen of old-fashioned 
building lovingly preserved ; then around this the narrow 
village streets, with uneven lines of gables, thatched eaves, 
overlapping stories, bay-windows, lattices bright with 
flowers, all running in and out in all possible directions ; 
with children playing everywhere under the great trees, 
always respectful in their behavior, and scarcely ever show- 
ing signs of destitution even in the poorest parts of the 
island ; then on the nearest hill is usually a manorial castle 
or mansion, with its park and well-tilled grounds, occupied 
not generally by noblemen, but by gentlemen of property, 
who have purchased the old feudal seat and rent the land 



64 



MEMOIR. 



around to independent peasantry. We skirted the shore of 
the island from Ryde south, and then went to Freshwater 
Bay, then struck into the interior to Newport the capital 
town, then north to Cowes, and so back to Southampton. 
I can only give you a running sketch. Friday, the 20th 
July, we left Southampton on the steamer, and reached 
Ryde after a little shower, under a clear sky, and in a tine 
breezy air. We went up the long half-mile pier into the 
neat white town, past pleasant balconies of flowery ter- 
races, and walked straight out to Binstead, through the 
hedgerows, to visit a quarry, for geological purposes. 
The Isle of Wight is very interesting geologically, showing 
a succession of recent tertiary deposits lying upon the 
earlier series of the chalk and wealden, all which, by means 
of prodigious inundations in remote ages, have been laid 
bare along the shores in enormous cliffs. The great chalk 
downs rise in domes along these shores ; and across the 
middle of the island, on either side, are later formations 
leaning against them, as it were, they having been thrown up 
with the underlying wealden strata by some huge upheaval, 
parting the strata above them. At nightfall we reached 
Brading, a narrow street of very old and rather dismal 
looking houses, whose leaning doors and rambling windows 
did not seem very inviting ; but the " Bugle " turned out 
a very nice little inn after all. I wish you could have seen 
my chamber up in the eaves. There was no better in the 
house ; it was neat as the best New England parlor, tiny 
as a bird's-nest, with two lattices about two feet square, a 
white bed with nice curtains filling nearly half of it up to 
the low ceiling (across which ran an old-fashioned beam), 
one or two queer little chairs, and a clean brown floor. Here 
I passed a good night, and next morning, although the clouds 
threatened, we sallied out to look at the old church. It is 
the oldest perhaps on the island, being that in which Chris- 
tianity was first preached in the island, about a thousand 
years ago ! Much of the earliest work remains in it. Here 



MEMOIR. 



65 



we saw the monuments of the Oglander family of the time 
of the English Revolution, placed in shrines, which filled 
up the whole corner of the church. The stout knights, cut 
in wood, lay in full armor leaning on their elbows upon 
the tombstones, and had a very grotesque look. The old 
windows had been replaced in many parts of the church by 
flat-headed lights of later style, and we could see how cen- 
tury after century the needs of modern faith and form had 
gradually introduced more and more light into the dark 
places. This was the curacy of Richmond, author of The 
Dairyman's Daughter, a story in great repute among the 
evangelical peasantry, and which has gained a wide celeb- 
rity. Here he devoted himself to the improvement of a 
rough, uneducated people, and wrote many descriptions of 
the scenery and manners of the Isle of Wight. As soon as 
the weather allowed, we mounted the hills and crossed to 
Culver Cliff, a great white chalk precipice, looking out to 
sea. To reach it we passed along a dizzy verge, over 
which the shore looked dwarfed, and the lazy roll of the 
waves below was scarcely audible. The harebells and a 
profusion of other brilliant flowers covered the rich green 
slopes on one side of us, while the monstrous chasm yawned 
on the other. The air was cool and refreshing, and it was 
grand to look far off to sea, beyond the white headlands, 
and watch the vessels come and go along the horizon. We 
went down to the shore by a steep path, and I sought the 
wonderful chalk fossils I had so often longed for, though 
without the success I had expected, the rock requiring 
heavier blows than my small hammer could give. But I 
obtained a few pretty specimens, and we went along the 
shore, observing the junction of the chalk with the later 
strata of sandstones, and the exquisite colors of the differ- 
ent layers, warmed and softened past the power of painter 
to render or tongue to describe. Then up the cliffs again 
to Sandown, and on to Shanklin in a rain. Here we seemed 
to have fallen from fortune's favor at once. We reached 
5 



66 



MEMOIR. 



the town in a rain late in the evening and had no choice of 
hotels ; the only rooms we could get were above the eaves 
and could not be ventilated ; the sole window of one was 
in the roof above and opened by pulling a string, and that 
of the other had no string and opened on a mass of black 
wet roofs. Next morning we came down quite discontent- 
ed, but were thrown into raptures at finding ourselves in a 
lovely breakfast room, opening out by a bay-window into 
a great garden lawn covered with trees and flowers and 
overhung by woody steeps, all glowing in the splendor of 
sunshine. That beautiful Sunday morning we shall never 
forget. Shanklin is our ideal of an English village, which, 
after the half dozen rhapsodies I have indulged in upon 
the subject in this and my letter to A., I must leave you to 
imagine for yourself. The Sunday quiet here was specially 
delightful, as we went along between the ivy, holly, and 
hawthorn hedges, looking over at the bowers and sunny ar- 
cades of honeysuckle, convolvulus, and all other flowers that 
love to twine about cottage houses. We wanted at every 
moment to carry away some image of the loveliness we 
saw, and put something of this quiet simple good taste and 
lowly grace into our New England villages, where people 
have not yet learned to be satisfied with a little space, and 
to fill it well, by making the most of natural means and 
opportunities. We climbed the downs above. They looked 
over the village embowered in trees, and the great bay 
sweeping inwards in perfect curve from the Culver Cliff 
white in the distance ; the many colored lines of stratifica- 
tion showing plainly along the precipices and telling by 
their inclinations on either side the story of the earthquake- 
like convulsion which had heaved up their quiet sediments 
from the depths of ancient seas. We saw what an enor- 
mous mountain of chalk had been swept away by ages of 
fluvial and tidal motion. All up the rich hill-sides white 
cottages and red roofs peeped out from clumps of old trees, 
and amidst them brown spires and towers of churches. 



MEMOIR. 



67 



At Bonchurch, the next village, we visited Sterling's grave. 
The poet's monument is only a plain stone marked John 
Sterling, with date and age, not a flower, not a shrub even, 
not a leaf, which lovers of his sweet Hymns of a Her- 
mit can pluck for a memorial. Bonchurch is in a cleft 
of rock, precipices above and below. Here between the 
showers, which lasted in close succession for nearly two 
days, I managed to climb the steep stairs and paths cut in 
the solid stone and geologize a little in the chalk above, 
and obtained for my pains some very good ammonites and 
so forth. My room at the cheerful inn overlooked the sea 
like a watch-tower, and I could note every white-capped 
surge that went chasing the others over the green water 
under mists and low driving clouds, slowly and wearily all 
the day long ; and there I wrote home and so made the 
rainy time a delight. At midnight, I awoke and went to 
the window, I know not why ; the sky had cleared at last, 
and the planet of the morn was shining large and still over 
the smoothened water, and took my thoughts away across 
the far broader seas to you all at home. The deep quiet 
and the pleasant surprise fixed the whole scene deeply, and 
I think of it as one of those near visions we occasionally 
get when barriers of space and time seem almost moved 
away out of our path by His tenderness who keeps us all, 
whether apart or near. 

As I went up out of Bonchurch next morning towards 
Ventnor, I could not help being reminded of the Oriental 
Petra, shut as it is in a cleft of rock, and traversed by 
flights of narrow steep stairs in the sides thereof; only 
Petra is desolate, and this is all alive with beauty and hu- 
man happiness. From the downs above, the French coast 
was visible. The great rock bastion of the Undercliff 
stretched its craggy front, crowned with woods and culti- 
vated lands and grassy slopes, continuously for miles over 
against the opposite shore, and forced on us its fine sym- 
bolism. How grand is England's position among the less 



68 



MEMOIR. 



emancipated nations ! May she stand as firm and calm as 
these her rocks in these political storms. Passing out from 
the Undercliff the road led us through low downs, over 
which we plodded a somewhat weary way, once losing the 
path and wandering off to a pleasant farm-house among the 
hills that gave us shelter from a sudden shower, until, after 
looking into the tiniest church in England, — St. Law- 
rence's, originally only 20 feet long by 8 wide and 12 high, 
— we reached Niton at sundown, to be refreshed at a good 
inn, and hear the organ, that chanced to be playing as we 
passed, in the time-stained, age-worn church. We had a 
pleasant talk with the organist, a plain farmer's boy, and 
got him to play to us. We found, too, a hymn-book we 
had never seen (! !) in which were several grand new 
hymns for our collection. The boys in these villages took 
off their caps to the strangers as we passed, little knowing 
what pleasure their simple good manners give to pilgrims 
in a strange land. 

Next morning up the great St. Catherine's Down, the 
loftiest of all, and, oh ! what-a glorious breeze, and what 
luxuriance of delicate flowers, and what views off to sea, 
and what views down the valleys, over village and streamlet 
and chine, and what sweeps upward and downward of per- 
fect green ! I gathered dozens of varieties of flowers I 
never saw before from this noble hill, that white day we 
walked over it. We lingered on the top breathing the 
fresh morning airs, and looking at the old tower set up on 
the summit by good Walter de Godeton in the fourteenth 
century, in the windows of which he commanded that a 
light should be kept burning by a priest, whose work it was 
to see that no mariners should be shipwrecked on that 
rough coast for lack of kindly warning. The sod was elas- 
tic under our feet ; the sheep were feeding along the uplands ; 
the deep green gorse gave richer color to the landscape, 
with its great domes and clumps scattered all around, than 
any grass or foliage of midsummer ; timid hares darted into 



MEMOIR. 



69 



its shelter at my feet ; the steep cliffs and white crags fronted 
the sea below ; hill-masses and valley-mazes alternated in 
light and shadow far inland ; the sky was clear overhead. 
How could it not be the best of days, the very life-spring 
of strength and joy for us ! That was the first shining hour 
in our Isle of Wight journey; — the second you shall learn 
anon. 

In the afternoon came the rain again, faithfully follow- 
ing us day by day. Through the dull, leaden, dripping 
weather we walked, first over dizzy precipices to the coast- 
guard station at Atherfield Point, where the Government 
keep a force to prevent smuggling, and where we dined at 
a cottage perched like John o' Groat's house on the bold 
headland, and then over breezy moors, among stunted 
trees and furze, till, just as the spirit and flesh alike were 
giving out, the sun sent a great shaft of glory through a 
rift, a pretty bridge under elms and a pleasant cottage ap- 
peared, and we came suddenly amidst delicious bird songs, 
that must have been from the throats of nightingales, into 
the street of a village, which only Shanklin could equal in 
beauty. The organ was pealing from the old church, as 
before at Niton, and looking into and around the low ven- 
erable tower, we saw that an exquisite taste had preserved 
all that was precious in the ancient structure and brought 
in every modern improvement for comfort and pious feel- 
ings' sake that was in keeping therewith. A rectory, ab- 
solutely buried in flowers and elms, nestled close by. It 
was the home, two centuries ago, of Bishop Ken, the 
author of the beautiful hymns, " Glory to thee, my God, 
this night," and " Awake my soul and with the sun." 
Exiled from his bishopric of Winchester, he retired to this 
secluded parish of Brightstone, and devoted himself to the 
care of the rustic community, till recalled to his larger 
sphere, leaving to the spot the undying fragrance of a 
" sweet and virtuous soul." Here, too, Wilberforce spent 
his closing years, and so the glory of the great emancipation 



70 



MEMOIR. 



rests also upon this little nook. Our inn here was a per- 
fect idyl. It opened by a casement upon a pretty garden, 
seen through woodbine tracery, and a side wall covered 
with a prairie rose, white with blooms, and then past these 
a row of elms and deep foliage. In the evening we 
heard the young men in the yard, who had been busy at 
skittles, singing " Annie Laurie," and other simple bal- 
lads, and in the morning took breakfast in a garden bower. 
That morning opened the second white day. First, we 
sketched the old church, and it was fortunate we did so, as 
no picture of it was to be obtained afterwards. Hearing 
the sound of little voices, I followed them, and came upon 
a picturesque school-house, built in old Gothic style, with 
thatched porches, where the children were singing a morn- 
ing hymn. Under the elms and in the village quiet, there 
was something very touching in the sound of the well- 
trained voices of these hundred little boys and girls. Long- 
fellow had meantime gone in before I arrived, and seen 
the teacher and listened to some of the exercises, and came 
away greatly pleased with the whole. Next up the height 
to the Motestone, sl great upright rock, upon a summit 
commanding a view over the interior of the island, where 
the Saxons used to hold their gemote, or public meetings, to 
deliberate on peace and war, murmuring dissent or clashing 
their shields in token of approval. Around this old stone 
grew up the germs of English Parliament and New Eng- 
land town meeting. We followed along the ridge of the 
down, went below to the shore at Brook to see the fossil 
forest of lignite trunks, failing therein by reason of the 
height of the tide, then up again through Compton Chine 
across Afton Down to Freshwater Bay, a few houses under 
a noble chalk cliff, where a fortress stands on the very ex- 
treme verge of the island southwestward, and the cannon 
of England are pointed across the Channel. But it was 
something more than cliffs or fortress or beautiful bay that 
made our hearts leap at the sight of the spot. Just behind 



MEMOIR. 



71 



it, in the woody recess, is Faringford Manor, the house of 
Tennyson. Here the shy poet laureate has withdrawn to 
the very verge of human society to study and dream and 
write his magnificent poems. 

" Where, far from noise and smoke of town, 
I watch the twilight falling brown 

All round a careless-order'd garden 
Close to the ridge of a noble down. 

"For groves of pine on either hand, 
To break the blast of winter, stand ; 

And further on, the hoary Channel 
Tumbles a breaker on chalk and sand." 

Read this invitation of his to Maurice to come and visit 
him. It will give you a perfect idea of the seclusion of 
the place. He sees very few people ; and though, as a 
chatty old man who lives close by told us, a great many 
people come to look at him, very few of them can catch a 
sight of the hermit. Of course we tried our luck in that 
way, being both of us as devout admirers, probably, of 
the In Memoriam and Idyls of the King, as could be 
discovered anywhere. We walked through the deep pine 
groves (" careless-order'd " they were indeed), only catch- 
ing a glimpse of the old house through a dim opening, 
high walls and thickets hiding it on every side. I was just 
attempting to sketch the roof and a window or two, that 
rose above the trees from near the end of the narrow dark 
lane by which the nearest approach is to be gained, when 
voices sounded close by. Intruders as we were, we felt a 
little ashamed, in all our longing to see him, at being 
caught in this apparently private lane, and hardly dared 
look up as two men passed by. The glance of an instant 
told me that one of them was he : above the middle size, 
with rather round shoulders and a little stoop, a large nose, 
full and peaked beard, old, low, broad-brimmed black felt 
hat slouched over his face, long, thin, dark features, and 
spectacles. He looked up as he passed us in a sort of half 



72 



MEMOIR. 



surprise, as it seemed very natural, at the sight of two 
brown -linen, bloused interlopers in his lane, in a manner 
that a little reminded me of Freeman Clarke, and instantly 
withdrew his eyes to the ground. He was in conversation 
with a common-looking person, and we heard a few words 
about some business matter or other. He passed by, and 
of course we had then nothing to do but betake ourselves 
out of the lane, and go home again in our great content. So 
we followed them down the shady lane towards the gate, 
supposing they would go out. But lo ! they stopped, and, 
with hand upon the gate, he was just taking leave of his 
companion as we approached. The poor trespassers were 
caught indeed, and for a minute dared not go forward ; they 
must actually be shown out of his grounds by the poet him- 
self ! But there was nothing for them but to brave it 
out; so they hurried by him, just stealing another instant's 
look and hearing him say last words to his visitor. That 
was the second golden hour of the Isle of Wight journey. 
... At Newport on Sunday evening we heard part of a 
noble sermon which much refreshed us, especially as com- 
ing from a Church of England clergyman, my own ex- 
perience, as well as L.'s, having been without exception 
unpleasant in that direction, as respects preachers and 
preaching. . . . All I have learned about America, in 
Swiss or English papers, is that Heenan has arrived, that 
the Great Eastern is to sail in a week, and that Betty 
Barlow has run away from her husband ! This last in a 
Swiss daily. 



MEMOIR. 



73 



TO HIS SISTER K. 

Nice, November 26, 1860. 
"Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen bliihn, 
Im dunkeln Laub die Gold-Orangeu gliihn, 
Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht, 
Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht 1 " 

Here in these latter days of November I walk amid 
roses and hear the song of birds. Gold oranges actually 
glimmer through dark foliage, and soft winds blow shore- 
wards from the blue Mediterranean up the conch-like 
sweep of this beautiful bay. The peasants are shaking the 
ripe fruit from the olive groves that cover the hills and 
nestle in the plashing coves. Agaves lift their tall candela- 
bra full of ripened seeds, and cactus blooms are shooting 
from uncouth stems; and we go up the winding avenue 
between stately cypress-glooms and among the bristling 
spears of palms to the noble terrace of what was once the 
Castle of Nice, and look over the round basin of groves 
and gardens and white villas stretching out to a circling 
band of bare, pointed hills, which protect the little city from 
the winds of the Maritime Alps. ... I don't believe that 
any sky can surpass in softness and mystery that which I 
saw last Sunday afternoon from the Roman ruins of Cimiez 
above the city. It was pure pellucid space. It was almost 
spiritual in its transparency ; pure color without substance ; 
pure presence without place ; it is impossible to find words 
that will describe it. The sunny clouds lay in it like soft 
shadows from some far-off forms, immaterial and intangible 
as space itself. I have often said that I did not believe the 
Italian sky could ever be softer and purer than that of some 
of our midsummer days ; but I think I shall have to take it 
back, after last Sunday's vision. . . . The broken arches 
and stone seats [of Cimiez] are sufficiently preserved to 
give a full idea of the great amphitheatre, built for public 
games, gladiatorial and other. Tall cane-grass rustles, and 



74 



MEMOIR. 



melancholy olives spread their straggling boughs and starved 
foliage over and around the deep arches that once echoed 
with the wars and cries of maddened combatants and the 
plaudits of a savage multitude at the cruel sport. Ameri- 
can slavery will leave behind no such indestructible monu- 
ment of its cruelties to warn future generations. It has 
in it no such element — I had almost said of dignity — as 
Roman barbarism had. It builds no grand piles to testify 
of confidence in itself and in the future. It is the creature 
of the selfish and sensual desires of the moment. Those 
old Romans were builders, on a gigantic scale ; it is only a 
destroyer ; its very production curses the soil. The Ro- 
mans left literature, codes of law, magnificent roads, enor- 
mous structures ; it will live in history only to make men 
wonder that a thing so mean and cowardly could have been 
endured a day. It is worth while to think of these differ- 
ences just now, when the signs of its destruction seem to 
be looming up fast. We have just read in the English 
papers the account of the elections in America. Of course 
we are overjoyed at the result [the election of Abraham 
Lincoln], and thought of illuminating our little upper cham- 
ber. Perhaps it would be wise to wait and see what the 
victors mean to do. But whatever they mean to do, the 
victory has a value beyond their purpose and their doings. 
I see that South Carolina threatens to secede. I hope she 
will be permitted and even urged so to do. Nothing could 
do so much toward transferring the agitation where it will 
have to come soon, — into the heart of slavedom. The 
year that sees secession sees slavery abolished. . . . 

I am glad that you have read and enjoyed Sartor Resar- 
tus. It is full of earnestness and power ; and in its quaint 
way describes experiences and phases of spiritual growth 
in which all thinking persons will recognize much of their 
own life. And what a noble book Fichte's Destination of 
Man is, putting the grand truths we have the deepest need 
to believe upon necessary foundations ! 



MEMOIR. 



75 



Florence, February 20, 1861. 
I have been reading Dante in the Italian ; of course, in 
Florence, that is the one thing that must be done. I grew 
wearied, however, and the last part, the Paradiso, was 
skimmed over. It is too abstractly theological to inter- 
est one much, except as the expression of Dante's own life. 
The Inferno is much more vigorous, and shows what a 
terrible reality the old Catholic hell was to the men of the 
thirteenth century, and how they carried their political 
hates and loves into their thoughts of the invisible world. 
You know how much I always disliked Italian ; I am now 
making the best of my enforced exile by trying to learn 
it, and can read it, on the whole, pretty well. But I quite 
despair of getting at the power of conversing in it. There 
are so many queer exclamations and quirky terms in it, and 
so much is done in the way of conveying meaning by ges- 
ture. Shaking the fingers in each other's faces is the ordi- 
nary mode of enforcing opinion among the Italians. The 
French gesticulate a good deal, but they are lambs to these 
creatures of passion. But you would love to see the coun- 
try people about Florence. They are very different from 
the dried-up city folk. The women and children are so 
fresh, ruddy, and beautiful, with soft dark eyes and pleas- 
ant faces, have so much feeling and so much grace, that 
one does not wonder that this is a land of artists. Some- 
times it seems as if every one you meet might have sat for 
a Madonna or Child, to one of those old painters whose 
works hang in the Uffizii or the Pitti galleries. The color 
of Andrea del Sarto's and Raphael's faces does not compare 
for beauty with this country bloom. It is strange, since 
this people live in damp houses down in the meadows, with 
brick or stone floors, below the surface of the ground often, 
and the exhalations which rise from the soil after sunset 
are pernicious, at least to a stranger. Then they eat very 
little meat, and their wine has been for some years past in- 
ferior, and the grape harvest very small. The groups sit- 



76 



MEMOIR. 



ting at the doors along the wayside, at work, their busy 
fingers plying the little plaits of straw as swiftly as those 
of a practiced knitter fly, the clean yellow bundles of the 
straw glowing beside them, with light plumes in the sun, 
their pleasant songs mingling with the melting, summer-like 
atmosphere, while the whole picture lies bright in the set- 
ting of the far blue misty hills and the snow mountains 
peering above them, are altogether as perfectly idyllic 
as can be conceived. Only to think that this is the Tuscan 
February ! Theodore Parker's grave is in sight of all this 
divine beauty of the Val d'Arno. The little Swiss ceme- 
tery stands just outside the Pinti gate, its paths set with 
tall cypresses, and its soft slope gently inclined from the 
city wall, which is clothed with ivy, towards the mountains. 
Green Fiesole is in view, with its double summit, and the 
tall tower of its old church between, and the undulating 
hills, deepening, as they recede, from amber and warm gray 
into blue, and then into that mystery of color, for which 
there is no name ; and beyond, the Apennines, with their 
grand white crowns, ever softened in winter as in summer 
by the tender haze, that so steadfastly abides, brooding 
like a heavenly presence, over the Val d'Arno, and mak- 
ing those stern snows and their ideal purity preachers of 
the Infinite Love. The cemetery is small and rather 
crowded, but nothing could be more simple and serene, 
more free from every form of pride or vain show. The 
noble brain and heart that worked so faithfully and fear- 
lessly to the last, that were, in fact, the widest passage 
opened in all this century for theological and moral truth, 
and practical liberty and justice, to the popular conscience, 
rest in the shadow of a plain gray stone, marked with his 
name, and with the place and date of his birth and of his 
death. A few violets and periwinkles are growing from 
the earth above them. We shall plant a vine of this brave, 
warm Tuscan ivy beside the stone. My thoughts of him 
would not stay by the grave. The voice is silent that is 



MEMOIR. 



77 



so needed now, and the eyes that saw in vision, for so many- 
years, the coming on of these days of the final conflict with 
slavery were closed forever at the moment of their dawn- 
ing. But I felt more than ever how truly he must be liv- 
ing now in the midst of the scenes he identified with his 
being and charged with his own proper life. The body, 
worn out at last with toils for God and man that knew no 
respite, fell by this quiet wayside, far from the great battle, 
and fitly rests where this Italian people are achieving polit- 
ical and civil freedom, by peaceful revolution, and calling 
back their ancient genius for literature and arts. The 
spirit, that could not faint nor be weary, remains with us. 
And no one now living is competent to measure its work. 

One thing has disappointed us in Italy : we have heard 
but little fine music, and seen but little fine acting. The 
best operas do not seem to be performed with success. 
I am quite sure that Germany is more interesting to 
one who enjoys music than this land of musical compos- 
ers. I have a desire to hear the German music in Ger- 
many. Though I find so much to enjoy in the scenery 
of Italy, the Cornice road, the Apennines, and the Val 
d'Arno, yet I look back to the Swiss mountains with 
longing, as I always have done since I saw them first. 
There is no beauty elsewhere like that of those green 
alps, and those white glaciers, and those tall peaks and 
battlements above the clouds. The richness of the woods 
helps much in the Swiss scenery. In Italy this element 
is almost wanting. The limestone is generally very bare 
(I am speaking now of the northwestern and central 
parts of Italy), and the sombre, dull olive is not pleasant 
to look on. The plains of Lombardy, indeed, are extremely 
rich, yielding three harvests a year, and splendidly irri- 
gated ; but great plains, however fertile, have not the charm 
of mountain scenery, of course. The really delicious thing 
in Italy is the atmosphere. Its colors clothe the bare rock 
with astonishing beauty. I never saw distant mountains 



78 



MEMOIR. 



so ethereal, nor clouds so penetrated and melting in pure 
light. And the intensity of the sunbeams of a clear day, 
even in January, is such as to change the natural colors of 
objects into an illumination one could hardly have thought 
them capable of. The stone pine is a grand figure in these 
worlds of light. Its massive, straight trunk, bare far up 
into the atmosphere above all other trees, the broad tuft 
that suddenly starts out of it, and forms a great dome of 
darkest green, turning almost to black in the distance by 
contrast, boldly stands out against the sky on the hill-tops 
or on the low plains. One thinks of the Bible description, 
" trees of God, planted by rivers of water, whose leaf shall 
not wither." 

TO HIS SISTER A. 

Florence, April 10, 1861. 
I should like to give you some idea of the Art of Flor- 
ence, which I have had a good opportunity this winter to 
study pretty satisfactorily. I should like to tell you of the 
ages of Florentine architecture ; of the grand simplicity 
of these massive palaces ; of the beautiful round-arched 
cornices that gird them about ; of the imposing Palazzo 
Vecchio Tower, stately and fair, that overhangs the wall 
beneath it at least six feet ; of the charming double win- 
dows, with Gothic arches and cusps ; of that " mount of 
marble," the Duomo, so rich and elaborate without, so 
sombre and simple and sublime within ; of Giotto's soaring 
Campanile, with its fine marble mosaic, its twisted shafts, 
its gladness, and its grace ; of Ghiberti's wonderful bronze 
doors, that Michael Angelo called the " Gates of Paradise" 
and their borders of flowers and animals, where the birds 
hover and brood and peck, and the owl hoots, and the snail 
crawls, and the squirrel listens and chirps and cracks his 
nut, and the grasses wave, and the roses open to the dew. 
Such vitality in carving I think was never seen. And I 
should like to describe to you, if it were possible, which it 
is not, some of the pictures, the select of all the world, 



MEMOIR. 



79 



gathered into the Uffizii and Pitti galleries, the churches 
and the cloisters ; to show you Angelico's angels, with their 
radiant faces, their uplifted trumpets, their feet hastening, 
" beautiful on the mountains," to greet their Lord ; and 
Perugino's tender faces, dissolved in sorrow over the Christ 
laid in loving arms beneath the cross ; and Andrea del 
Sarto's beautiful children and manly youths and genuine 
human prophets and saints, his harmonies of composition, 
and his colors, surpassed, it seems to me, by none but 
Titian, if equaled by any other. His Madonna del 
Sacco is, of all the " Holy Families " the art of the church 
has produced, the most truly that with which this age of 
ages can sympathize: Joseph, reclining on a sack, is 
reading aloud, while the mother looks forward, rapt in 
attention, and half unconsciously puts out her arm to check 
the child, who in the eagerness of his delight, as at a 
pretty plaything, stretches out his hand to grasp the Book. 
It is a real family scene, with nothing supernatural or pre- 
ternatural about it ; husband and wife devoutly reading in 
their plain home at evening, with their beautiful, ruddy, 
boy-like boy at their knees. And such an atmosphere of 
holy repose and love brooding over the scene ! There is 
but one " Holy Family " I know of that seems to me 
greater, and that in only one portion. I mean Raphael's 
Madonna della Seggiola at the Pitti. The eyes of that in- 
spired child look through and through the world, beholding 
something beyond — what it is who can tell? — which illu- 
mines them with a splendor and a joy which I never beheld 
in any other work of a human artist. It is one of those 
inspirations which no copy, however accurate, can convey. 
There is not one of the many copies of the Seggiola which 
gives any idea of it ; and yet they are as well done as any 
of the copies of the great masters in every other respect. 
In general, I don't think I admire Raphael so much as I 
did, and so much as most do. I greatly prefer the coloring 
of Andrea del Sarto, and the drawing of many other 



80 



MEMOIR. 



painters. And in feeling, Perugino and Andrea and some- 
times Correggio grow upon me, in comparison with him. 
And last, I must not forget Titian's splendid Flora, an in- 
carnate sunbeam, turning all other pictures in the Venetian 
room into pale ghosts beside her, and his grave, calm, 
severe portraits that make the present generations of men 
look tame and trifling. And then the statues of Michael 
Angelo, the great intellectual conceptions seeming to weigh 
down the marble and break away from it and hover over 
it like an atmosphere ! An infinite sorrow transfuses 
the Pieta in the shadow of the high altar in the Duomo, 
where the mother's cheek supports the falling head, in 
a silent woe that seems like eternal rest. The limbs, re- 
laxed in death, slide earthward, as if they said, " It is fin- 
ished," and an aged person, all grief and compassion and 
tender love, bends over them, and folds them to his heart. 
It is thought to be Joseph of Arimathea. The work is un- 
finished, like most of Michael Angelo's best things. Marble 
seemed to give way under him, and he left his conceptions 
only half sketched in it. In this case, however, the block 
does not seem to have been sufficiently large. Of the 
Night and Morning you have seen copies ; and of the other 
statue or group resembling it, in the same chapel of San 
Lorenzo, almost equally grand, which seems to me to be his 
lament over the ruin of Florence, the treachery of her 
children, and the death of her liberty, I think I have 
written already. But of all these things how feeble an 
idea any description would give ! Painting and sculpture 
cannot be described. One wants, at least, photographs to 
help out the words. I shall bring home some, and then 
shall try to make you in some degree sharers in my 
pleasure. 



MEMOIR. 



81 



TO HIS SISTER K. 

Kagatz, Switzerland, May 9, 1861. 

When I wrote you last I was in the sunny Val d'Arno, 
luxuriating in the splendor of the Tuscan Campagna and 
the wealth of Italian art. Now behold me, if the sudden 
transition does not take away your breath, far up among 
the Alpine heights again, with snowy peaks above me and 
streams rushing through blossoming meadows below me. 
Yes, back in my dear old Switzerland, for which I have felt 
the " Heimweh " all winter ; back for a few days to breathe 
the mountain air, and see the simple, happy, cordial moun- 
tain people once more. A week ago I was in the vast 
Lombard plain, which stretches across Northern Italy un- 
der the shadows of the Alps, one uninterrupted level of 
such fertility and culture combined as probably does not 
exist elsewhere. I was standing on the very top of the 
spire of Milan Cathedral ; above the hundred white statues 
on their slender pinnacles ; above the delicate maze of flying 
buttresses, that seem buoyed up in their pure, fine tracery 
in mid-heaven ; above the " mount of marble," and " the 
height, the space, the gloom, the glory " within ; above the 
beautiful city,; above the refulgent plain. And it seemed 
that one perpetual summer glory must forever rest upon 
the whole world. 

The mountains were veiled, and I seemed to look on the 
rim of the earth on every side, and could see nothing but 
verdure and sunlight. Three days, and I was amidst the 
snows of Spliigen Pass, — cut through eight feet deep for 
the passage of the diligences, — and then dashing in an 
open sledge over the long summit of the mountain for an 
hour and a half against driving snow, through piercing 
wind, beside precipices of enormous depth. The first part 
of the ascent had been charming. I had come up the 
Lake of Como, a kind of Lake George, only under higher 
mountains and with more richly cultivated shores, to Col- 
6 



82 



MEMOIR. 



ico ; then had taken a voiture with a Milanese and an Irish 
gentleman to Chiavenna which we reached late at night. 
Then, after a drowse of two hours between a cotton coverlid 
and a cotton mattress, coming out of it, as you may suppose, 
more dead than alive, at one o'clock, and getting into one 
of the four large voitures (an extraordinary number for the 
season), I commenced the ascent in pitchy darkness. As 
soon as it was light we all dismounted, preparing to climb 
the "short cuts " rather than creep up the zigzags in the dili- 
gence. So up we went to an enormous height, from which 
we could look straight down into the far dwindled valley 
and up along the reaches of magnificent snow-covered pla- 
teaus beyond it. The brown, huddled villages, dotting the 
hollow, seemed saved as by miracle. From this elevation 
I could see how small a bit splitting off from the huge 
mountain side would suffice to bury them or sweep them 
all away in an hour. Yet there they rest secure and 
peaceful, trusting Nature's great quiet laws ; the well-tilled 
fields or clean meadows just tinged with spring-green con- 
trasting with the stern rocks and snows and mists above. 
There were long galleries cut in the rock-face, pierced with 
round arches through which I could look off to the moun- 
tain tops without seeing the valley ; and most beautiful 
ice stalactites hung from openings in these, great frozen 
streams, transparent as glass and drawn out into exquisite 
shapes. Over a sort of stone balcony, made on the verge 
of a precipice for the purpose, I looked down upon a water- 
fall descending in one steep plunge along the rock-face 
to the bottom of the valley, I think, the ethereal pearly 
paleness of which was wonderful to see* But now come 
sterner realities. It soon became too cold to walk com- 
fortably, and we betook ourselves to the voitures. After 
passing between masses of snow eight feet high, cleared 
by the mountaineers, we were informed that we must 
leave our comfortable seats and cross the Pass in open 
sledges ; comfortless things enough, and powdered with 



MEMOIR. 



83 



the snow which had already drifted into them this very- 
day. It was as cold as one of our severest December 
days on the Andover hills. The whole prospect around 
was one sheet of snow, here sweeping down into deep val- 
leys on the mountain top, here rising into rolling hills, 
there mounting into the mists that hung round the higher 
peaks of the Soretto and the Schreckhorn. We were two 
in each sledge, the driver outside and behind. The horse, 
though a rough looking old fellow, went at a swift pace 
through the drifted and deep snow. Here and there a des- 
olate stone house, with long lines of windows, appeared 
dimly through the sleety atmosphere, and the wind drove 
the sharp icy snow in our faces, and penetrated to our very 
bones. I had expected the sledges, but not such a storm, 
and was neither sufficiently clad nor able to bring my 
clothes well around my head and limbs. I think I never 
came so near freezing in my life. It was beginning to look 
serious when we drove into the Dogana (custom-house) 
shed. Never was a Dogana so welcome. I have often 
denounced the institution as a nuisance, and wished it cast 
into some bottomless pit, never to be heard of again. But 
I was ready at that moment to bless the man that invented 
it. A warm room and a soap-stone stove to restore the 
benumbed face and hands ! But what was our horror at 
hearing that we had yet more than an hour's sledging be- 
fore us. It seemed like braving the impossible, but there 
was no escape. So I tied my cap over my ears with my 
handkerchief, gathered my garments well about me, and, 
after an ineffectual attempt to get a cup of coffee and a bit 
of bread, took my place in the sledge. On we went along 
a path scarce visible on the edge of precipices, the reins, 
for the most part, loose on the horse's neck, the driver 
now and then gathering them up to turn him out of 
danger ; on, dashing up and down, right and left, my com- 
panion, blind behind a huge bearskin hood, in perpetual 
dread lest we should go over precipices, the wild way fly- 



84 



MEMOIR. 



ing beneath our sure-footed old racer. . . . Suddenly the 
horse turned his head downward, and then began such 
a downhill dash as you never saw nor conceived of. It 
seemed like going down the face of a wall. There was 
the vast gorge right under us, and we were at full speed. 
No zigzag, no tack, one direct steep, not hanging over the 
abyss, but flying down it on slippery snow. To this mo- 
ment, I know not what kept us from rolling headlong. 
Every law of falling bodies, every experience of sliding 
down steep hills, seemed to me decisive against the possi- 
bility of our getting safely to the bottom. Providence 
always works by natural causes, and I can only say, our 
horse was worthy to be canonized beside the horses of the 
Parthenon and St. Mark's. In spite of the danger, I found 
myself exhilarated by the performance. The driver cried 
out from behind " Va bene ! " " Benissimo ! " I shouted. . . . 

You may judge that the dinner at Splugen was welcome ; 
a nice, neat Swiss inn, too, with wooden floors and clean 
white aspect generally. The damp old fortress-like stone 
albergos of Italy were beyond the snows. So passed we the 
" snowy Splugen " on that ever-to-be-remembered Sunday, 
the 5th of May, 1861. . . . 

One thing more ; I must just mention it without details. 
I have been to the Vaudois valleys, — the valleys of the 
" hunted heroes of the Protestant faith " of old. You 
must have read of them, the Waldenses, whom the dra- 
goons of Louis XIV., nearly two hundred years ago, shot 
down in their mountain homes and along the quiet glens, 
for refusing to accept the Catholic religion, which their 
fathers for generations had held to be against the simplicity 
of the primitive faith. You have read of this little com- 
munity, which preserved the liberty to read the Bible and 
to govern themselves by ministers of their own choice, from 
the earliest times, in the Piedmontese mountains on the bor- 
ders of Italy and France ; of their persecutions, age after 
age ; of the exile of Henry Arnoud and his four thousand 



MEMOIR. 



85 



men, women, and children, driven at the point of the bayo- 
net over the Alps into Switzerland, and their heroic return 
to their native valleys ; of the brave resistance which these 
heroes of the faith made to the armies sent to extirpate 
them. You have read the little story of Pierre and his 
Family, have you not? If I remember rightly it is about 
these very people. At last, after centuries of martyrdom, 
these Protestant communities have won entire toleration. 
They have ventured down into the great Lombard and 
Piedmontese plain, which spreads one great sea of verdure 
in full sight of their lofty valleys, where, like Jesus over 
Jerusalem, they have brooded over Italy so many ages', 
longing to descend and save. They have a church at 
Turin, which I attended, a church at Nice, a church at 
Florence, or rather a school for educating ministers, and 
a church at Naples. They are full of the thought of 
"evangelizing Italy," and their protest will give life to 
liberty of thought. But they will not make many converts, 
I think. Italians, by constitution as well as by education, 
prefer Catholicism to Calvinism, and when they are free 
from that, will react to a freer and more rational faith than 
Calvinism. Well, I went far up the valleys, and saw the 
simple people, the children going to school along the moun- 
tain paths, the plain old cottages nestling among the crags, 
the mill streams in the glens and green meadows, the re- 
joicing mountain floods pouring down everywhere from the 
snowy heights, singing their songs of liberty. I fell in, 
very fortunately, with the schoolmaster of the village of 

, who gave me all the information I wanted, pointed 

out the rocks and caves and passes, famous in Vaudois 
history, — " not a cliff, not a rock on these hills where 
Vaudois blood has not flowed," he said. The people are 
very poor and unlearned, and their trust in " evangelizing 
Italy " is very touching. One thing disappointed me at first, 
their churches are all new, at least, not old ; even here, the 
Catholic portion of the population, though very small, has all 



86 



MEMOIR. 



the antiquity in church architecture. But I remembered that 
all the Protestant churches were destroyed by their perse- 
cutors, and that never till now have they had inducement to 
build permanent places of worship. Their temples have 
been these mountain caves and cliffs, altars and shrines " not 
made with hands." But I must defer further account of 
these things till I come home. I see the Southern Confeder- 
acy has declared war and taken Fort Sumter. It will have 
the effect to unite the North I think, and to put all slavery 
on one side and all freedom on the other. I am sorry that 
civil war should come of it, and I hope it will not last. But 
the North must not yield, let what will come. 

London, July 16, 1861 
In London, every reflecting person sees the tremendous 
necessity of maintaining social order in so crowded a com- 
munity, and so throws all his energy in that direction, even 
while fully aware that the people, and he himself perhaps 
as one of them, have by no means their just measure of 
political power. He is content to seek progress in a 
moderate and gradual way. In America, where the pop- 
ular voice gets heard so much more readily, we move 
much faster, sometimes quite violently, to our result. At 
this the English shrug their shoulders and shake their 
heads. But, in fact, they have yet in store the real con- 
flict with their aristocracy of Church and State, though 
approaching it more slowly than we have approached 
our corresponding conflict with the oligarchy of the slave 
power. 

The political reformers are not agreed to ask for more 
than the diminution of the property qualification now re- 
quired for the franchise. It seems to me that a time must 
soon come when the masses will become weary of the slow 
way in which the aristocracy concede ground, and then, 
perhaps, will be seen such a struggle between their tradi- 
tional English respect for established lav/, and the love of 



MEMOIR. 



87 



liberty, which lies equally deep in the English nature, as 
the national conscience has never experienced. 

As to our affairs, the English people are as much on our 
side as we can expect them to be, until we raise the Emanci- 
pation flag. It is a pity they are not roused to the expression 
of this sympathy somehow, if it were only to strike dismay 
into the hearts of the conspirators, as well as to urge on 
the English government to some positive manifestation of at 
least moral approval of our cause. But meantime, as the 
Lancashire cotton-spinners are certainly looking to India, 
Australia, and elsewhere for new supplies of that material, 
the war will strike a blow at slavery, which the vainglo- 
rious creatures, who are trying to ride King Cotton over 
the heads of all civilized states, have no conception of. 

I attended a meeting at Exeter Hall, the very night of 
my arrival here, held to welcome John Anderson, the fugi- 
tive slave. It was full of enthusiasm, and the speakers 
showed themselves well acquainted with the sins, both of 
the South and the North, not doing quite justice, I thought, 
to the present state of feeling in the North, nor seeing suf- 
ficiently that now is the moment, by encouraging the anti- 
slavery sentiment which is gaining vigor, to make it the 
mastering spirit in this crisis. However, the meeting paid 
us a compliment in refusing to listen to a speaker (not on 
the programme) who undertook to say that the North was 
as pro-slavery as the South, and that he believed our 
government would sell the fugitive slaves to pay the ex- 
penses of the war. He was put down by a storm of hisses 
and groans. This probably don't appear in the reports of 
the meeting. Poor John Anderson was so overcome by 
the enthusiasm that he broke down in attempting to speak 
and tell his story. But William Craft and others vindi- 
cated the capacity of the African race, by making capital 
speeches. It seemed very like an anti-slavery convention 
in America, only the speakers had it all their own way, 
and there was no prejudice to overcome, nobody to convert. 



88 



MEMOIR. 



How I wished Phillips or Garrison might have been there 
to speak for the North ; in place of a debile creature like 
myself, who can neither be shamed nor stirred into the ca- 
pacity to make a speech, and had to sit in the background 
and impatiently wish that I could. However, the audience 
were not disposed to hear any discussion of the merits of 
North or South, being bent upon the English policy of 
political non-interference. . . . 

From Brussels, I went straight to Dover by Calais, a 
journey of about a day, the passage of the straits, however, 
occupying only about an hour and a quarter or a half, and 
found myself once more, as it were, on home-ground. At 
Dover I left my baggage, and set out on a foot journey 
through a portion of Kent, the great hop-ground, the " gar- 
den of England," and — the home of my ancestors. Of 
course I could not come so near as Dover, without pilgrim- 
aging to Heme Hill, to hunt up family vestiges, hoping, at 
least, if I found no cousins, to behold some old homestead 
or family tombstone. At last I came out on the high road 
to Canterbury, the famous " Watling Street," along which 
they used to go in Catholic times to the shrine of Thomas 
a Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, where the stone pave- 
ment is worn into hollows by the knees of the worshippers 
who have bent there to ask the saint's blessing, coming 
from all parts of the Romish world. This is the road of 
Chaucer's " Pilgrims ; " and I looked upon it with special 
love and trod it with due devoutness in the thought thereof. 
I could fancy the broad white way thronged with the an- 
tique and pied cavalcades, 

" Gon on pilgrimages, 
The holy blissful martyr for to seke, 
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke." 

Doubtless A. and R. N. will remember Chaucer suffi- 
ciently to appreciate my enjoyment of this part of my 
walk. 

All this while you must consider that my old friends, the 



MEMOIR. 



89 



clouds, so faithful to me everywhere, were perpetually drop- 
ping showers, and I feared my patriarchal researches would 
be overtaken by a deluge. I trusted, however, in so purely 
historical an experience, that an ark would not be wanting, 
and you will see that I was not disappointed — Faversham, 
a very antique place indeed, with low, gabled houses, over- 
hanging second stories and innumerable bay windows, very 
busy too. All along the roads here, the green fields were 
full of apple and cherry-trees, alas ! bearing scarcely any 
fruit this year. I turned off the high road to the little 
hamlet of Boughton-under-Blee, in which is included 
Herne Hill about a mile off. As I entered it, the rain 
burst overhead in torrents. At the little " Red Squirrel " 
inn I sought in vain for tidings of the Johnson family. 
There were none remaining in the vicinity. As soon as 
the thunder-storm was over for the moment, I hastened 
off, through green by-lanes and pleasant woody nooks, to 
Herne Hill. The scenery grew lovelier every moment, 
and before I reached the old church, I wondered my fore- 
fathers could ever have left so charming a region, which, by 
the way, could not have been so very different two hundred 
years ago from now. It is a rich, rolling country, with fer- 
tile bottoms, well wooded hills, and distant rounded downs ; 
in general outline, as seen from a little distance, really not 
unlike North Andover. Were the Johnson brothers at- 
tracted by the resemblance to take up their abode in the 
latter place ? 

The old church stands on a hill, embosomed in trees, the 
inn and two or three more houses beside it, but nothing 
like a village, the population being scattered on the hills. 
It is a very antique Gothic church, with a tower at the end, 
and a smaller round tower at one angle of the latter, as is 
common in these old village churches. I looked carefully 
through the quiet yard, patiently deciphering many in- 
scriptions that were almost effaced by age, or covered with 
moss ; not an easy task, as the grass was quite wet, and the 



90 



MEMOIR. 



rain threatened to fall. But I found no sign of my fore- 
fathers. So then I resorted to the little " Red Lion " inn, 
close by, kept by Noah Miles, — manifestly the Ariz, — 
where the good wife of Noah received me hospitably, and 
I ordered a dinner, meanwhile making a descent on the 
parish clerk, to consult the church registers. He took me 
into the church, and opened the old trunk which held rec- 
ords going back to the sixteenth century! — ye which I 
faithfully perused, deriving but little satisfaction ; uncle S. 
might have been more successful, and I wished he was with 
me ; the fact, however, I brought away, that from 1 687 to 
1697 John Johnson was vicar of Heme Hill and Bough- 
ton, removed to St. John's in Thanet, afterwards to Apple- 
dore, and lastly to Cranbrook, and was author of several 
learned and valuable tracts. At about the same time one 
Edward Johnson is mentioned, but I cannot connect him 
with the emigrants to America. Whether the vicar had 
children does not appear. Perhaps father will remember 
when our ancestors came over. My impression is that it 
was before 1687, but I am not sure. The meagreness of 
my discoveries was something of a damper, to which the 
rain added somewhat, pouring in such floods that I found it 
difficult to reach the ark in safety. I have very pleasant 
recollections of the neat little inn, however, and of Heme 
Hill generally, and was not sorry to have made the pilgrim- 
age, though it did not give me the information I hoped for. 
Over the airy hills, among the pleasant woodlands, looking 
back now and then to the low tower rising amidst its 
ancestral trees, to the road of the Canterbury pilgrims again. 
Soon overtaken again by rain and one of the most violent 
thunder-storms I ever saw, the lightning striking once so 
near that I almost felt it. But it passed, and before sun- 
set I came in sight of the Cathedral, just visible, ghost-like, 
in the distant vapor which obscured the town, and was 
slowly clearing. Just then a magnificent rainbow spanned 
the heavens far above it, so that the grand old pile, with 



MEMOIR. 



91 



its tall towers, stood directly under the centre of the arch ! 
What a joyful omen it would have seemed to the pilgrims 
in the olden time ! I can give you no description of that 
wonderful Cathedral, traditionally the oldest in England, 
constructed and adorned, therefore, with all the grandeur 
which the nation is capable of concentrating upon it. 
Stately and massive, standing as if built for eternity, 
beautifully proportioned, all its parts in harmony, it is one 
of the finest specimens of what Coleridge called Gothic ar- 
chitecture, — " frozen music," that I have ever seen. The 
front towers and gateway are covered with exquisitely 
cut niche work, though curiously enough without a single 
statue. There is beautiful Norman work, and early English, 
and later Gothic, — specimens of every style of architec- 
ture England has known. There are quiet old cloisters on 
low Norman arches, with beautiful sheaf-groining and quad- 
ruple-light windows, surrounding a green graveyard ; there 
are noble groves and broad lawns, enclosed by antique 
buildings and ivy-clad ruins ; there are stately towers, and 
choir behind choir, and transept beyond transept, all gath- 
ered into one venerable form full of majesty, beauty, and 
repose. Within, if the whole could be seen at one view, it 
would bear comparison with Milan and Cologne in every 
way. But the choir, in which the services of the English 
Church are performed in great pomp of formalism, is sep- 
arated by a heavy screen from the transepts and nave, on 
one side, and the smaller transepts and remoter choirs and 
chapels on the other. In one of these latter is Thomas a 
Becket's shrine, or was ; as I said, the knee-worn floors tes- 
tify of the authority of sainthood and martyrdom in those 
old days. 

VIII. 

In the autumn of 1861 Johnson returned to his 
Salem home ; and soon resumed his ministry in the 



92 



MEMOIR. 



Free Church of Lynn, which continued for nine 
years longer. They were years of great excitement 
— the years of secession, war, and reconstruction. 
When Johnson heard abroad the news of the seces- 
sion of the Southern States, his first feeling was, 
as was that of many anti-slavery men, that the slave- 
holding States should be permitted to withdraw, tak- 
ing with them their curse of slavery and relieving 
the free States from its burden and guilt. But after 
his return to America he saw that there were ample 
reasons for holding to the Union and converting it to 
freedom. From that point of view he watched the 
progress of the war with intense interest and keen 
criticism ; and that of reconstruction with impatience 
and frequent indignation. He did not spare Lincoln 
in his judgments, still less Andrew Johnson and 
Seward. " Sumner," he writes, " steers on his way 

fearlessly, undeceived, and unswerving ; while 

ducks about looking after the half loaf, which, in his 
wisdom, he thinks is all we can get. Sumner's 
scholar-life saves him from all this dependence on 
the popular current." In all this we may see the 
idealist, with his absolute law of right ; the Puritan, 
with his one straight way ; perhaps the doctrinaire, 
with his obliviousness of practical difficulties. But 
in all times, the idealist, the Puritan, the non-con- 
formist are needed to keep up the practical men to a 
higher standard. 

In England, Johnson had seen something of the 
feeling of the mass of the people ; that in spite of the 
aristocratic leaning toward the side of the secession- 
ists, the large middle and working class were in our 
favor, the manufacturing population bearing with 
patience the suffering which the war brought them. 



MEMOIR. 



93 



And finding on his return how bitter a feeling ex- 
isted toward England on account of her supposed 
hostility, he showed, in a noble discourse, to his own 
congregation and at the Music Hall, in Boston, what 
injustice this did to the English people. 

TO GEORGE L. STEARNS. 

March 19, 1862. 
Do you not feel inclined, — when you see the nation of 
negro-phobists compelled to make Port- Royal the Plym- 
outh Rock of a new experiment of transforming into citi- 
zens the race they have spit upon, — to cry out in the 
words of the old hymn, 

" Mark the wonders of His hand ; 
Power, no empire can withstand ! " 

We are borne on the saving tide towards issues which 
the whole nation, North and South (or practically the 
whole), has resisted and still resists. A terrible Nemesis, 
a stern atonement ; and then, the " irresistible Grace of 
God!" 

November 9, 1862. 
Perhaps I am too sanguine; certainly more so than 
most of my friends. But this " Providential aspect " — 
this magnificent sweep of purification, — grows more and 
more impressive to me. I cannot escape confidence, if I 
would. 

TO MRS. G. L. STEARNS. 

December 29, 1862. 
What a year this has been ! Last week I worked out a 
sort of Record of it for my Sunday word. The disasters, 
forcing benefits, a chronological miracle-series, which have 
brought us where we are, closing us in like the narrowing 
of a mountain-pass to the one " narrow way ; " no exit but 
by justice, — these make it to me the grandest year I know 
of in history. And I cannot comprehend the despondency 
which I find among thoughtful, earnest men. 



94 



MEMOIR. 



Lincoln, backing slowly into God's highway, with his 
face always turned to Kentucky, is not the least of these 
wonders. I have small faith in most of our public men, 
who seem to be visible in the drama only to show how 
petty a factor individuals are in this working out of Fate, 
this slow uplifting of a people ; their inertness and resist- 
ance simply leverage. But we are among the mountains of 
God. We can't stop the avalanche after it has started, 
though it began with a snow-ball. 

TO R. H. MANNING. 

March 4, 1864. 

... In the afternoon I pushed on to Boston and Salem, 
having the pleasure in the car of the company of a little fel- 
low about six years old whom I never saw before, but who 
took wonderfully to asking me questions in a charming lit- 
tle way ; all along the road keeping up a constant prattle, 
in the course of which he informed me of about every- 
thing he knew; and, finally, in getting out, volunteered 
his name and where he lived, — how much better way 
than we elders have, who must hand out our cards ! His 
mother, who sat behind, thought it necessary to apologize 
for his " forwardness," but she would n't if she had known 
me. 

So here I am again, ruminating over the good time I 
have had with you all. You little know, dear friends, how 
much good a visit to you does me, nor how much more 
hopefully and cheerfully I take hold of my work for hav- 
ing felt the influence of your frank and cordial friendship, 
and seen your practical, thorough devotion to whatsoever 
good thing lies nearest the path of manly men and woman- 
ly women in this land. 

April 22, 1864. 

If anything could confound the fogies who swear by the 
old Ecclesiast that there is nothing new under the sun, it is 
this fact that two hundred millions have been contributed 
in this country in the last three years for relief of the 



MEMOIR. 



95 



suffering in this war. The sun never shone on the like 
before. 

Have you read George L. Stearns's letter in the Anti- 
Slavery Standard of April 8 ? If not, let not sleep close 
your eyelids till you do. It is a revelation of the trifling 
and trickery at Washington that makes one blush for his 
country. Stearns is a man of utter integrity, and every 
word must be wholly true. The effect of this letter, with 
Fort Pillow and the scandalous Hahn election, must be to 
rouse people to some sense of the mischievous policy at 
work. 

We have had L. here in Salem preaching for two socie- 
ties for two months, quickening the dead both spiritually 

and politically. At the church, where, for seven or 

eight years, scarcely a living ray of freedom or justice has 
penetrated, his first sermon produced an explosion, and the 
Episcopal church caught the fragments in her white apron, 
nicely spread out for the purpose. 

I have heard of Col. Zulavsky's experience on board the 
transport. What need we have in our army of young 

officers like him. H , I am sure, is doing nobly. What 

satisfaction it must be to you that he is with such a com- 
mander and, in such company as his regiment affords. 

The way out of slavery is a long one. Social order is 
not a thing to be picked up off a battle-field before the 
grass has grown over the dead. 

July 26, 1865. 

I have been reading Youmans's admirable book. The 
substance of the whole is the grandest thought science has 
attained ; that nothing is lost, and that all forces are mu- 
tually convertible. I accept it fully, and see in it the finest 
intellectual and spiritual correspondences. I hate, how- 
ever, to plod through details of experiments, without the 
apparatus. Even Tyndall, who is the most delightfully 
clear and simple, as well as poetic, demonstrator of scien- 
tific processes, rather wearies me. I am after the Law ; 



96 



MEMOIR. 



give me that, and I will use it where I want it. But illus- 
trative details, except in the actual world of facts, — writ- 
ten details, bore me. 

The spectrum analyses of stars, etc., in Kirchhoff and 
Bunsen's researches, have interested me very much. I hope 
there will soon be published some good popular work on 
the subject. 

"We are again in a nip among the political icebergs. God 
will save us, I trust, as hitherto. How much more perilous 
peace looks than war ! The negroes must have the ballot 
or everything will be wrong. We are baser than Davis if 
we don't give the rights of citizens to the race that has 
saved us. 

His intense interest in all these public affairs did 
not withdraw him from his studies. He did not, like 
Goethe, in the War of Liberation, retire to learn the 
Chinese language. But he found time to begin those 
profound studies, and to gather and digest the ma- 
terials which grew into his great work on the Ori- 
ental Religions and their Relations to Universal Re- 
ligion. The first volume, upon India, appeared in 
1872. The book, with its large scope, its faithful 
pains- taking research, its philosophic treatment and 
broad spirit, was a rare credit to American scholar- 
ship. But the slight recognition given to such a 
work in the leading critical reviews was certainly a 
discredit. The North American accorded it only a 
brief book notice. Mr. Ripley, in the columns of 
the New York Tribune gave a long and favorable re- 
view, and there were in the papers some other appre- 
ciative notices. 

The second volume, on China, was published in 
1877. Before long he was engaged upon the third 
and last, on Persia, which he did not live to finish. 



MEMOIR. 



97 



The completed chapters will, it is hoped, be given to 
the public. 

To the preparation of these works he gave years 
of laborious investigation and thought. He read 
carefully the writings of the best scholars, linguists, 
travelers, in German, French, and English, which 
bore upon his subject. He worked over these large 
materials, and added to them his original thought. 
Moved by his characteristic thoroughness he discussed 
not only the mythologies, theologies, and worships of 
these Eastern nations ; he held religion to cover, or 
at least to grow out of, or be modified by, all the 
national life of the peoples. So he wrote full chap- 
ters upon their government, education, science, social 
life, and the like. He brought to his work every 
kind of available knowledge, except personal knowl- 
edge of the countries and of the languages of their 
sacred books. This he took, as has been noted, 
" at second hand." Had he given the needed time 
to them, we should never have had his books. His 
years were not enough for the work, as it was ; and 
he wisely accepted the principle of the " division of 
labor." Had he been able to make his own transla- 
tions, it is not easy to see that they would have been 
of any more worth to us than those of the learned 
German scholars of whose labors he availed himself. 
Besides, the most learned linguist may well be want- 
ing in the philosophic and the spiritual insight which 
Johnson possessed, and which are needed for the right 
treatment of the subject he had in view — Compara- 
tive Religion. It may be true, as Professor Max 
Muller suggests, that, in some instances, he used less 
trustworthy authorities ; but in the main he must 
have used the very highest, since these cannot but 

7 



98 



MEMOIR. 



reveal themselves to an intelligent student, and since 
he used all the authorities that there were. It is 
somewhat difficult to account for the want of just 
appreciation of these books in certain critical quarters. 
Their voluminousness and exhaustive treatment, as 
well as the nature of their subject, are doubtless in the 
way of general readers in these hurried days. But, 
for all students of comparative religion, they will re- 
main a treasure-house not only of materials but of 
original thought which they can ill afford to neglect. 

He also wrote a very able and scholarly little book, 
called The Worship of Jesus. Thinking that those 
who rejected that worship, even in its most modified 
form, were bound to explain its existence, he traced 
its origin and growth on purely natural grounds. 
This book was published by the Free Religious As- 
sociation in 1868. 

to s. L. 

February, 1866. 

Of Higginson's translation of Epictetus you will see my 
notice in the January Radical. Lecky's Rationalism in 
Europe shows that the impulse of free examination and ra- 
tional inquiry is the great impulse of modern times, that 
it has overturned superstition, and that it is irresistible. 
The work is very learned but not in the least pedantic, 
and full of information on matters little investigated ; more 
courteous and positive, too, than Buckle, more entertain- 
ing than Spencer, or any other of the favorite writers of the 
semimaterialistic school. I am enjoying a little book by F. 
Pecaut, De VAvenir du Theisme Chretien. . . . The great 
company of the Unitarian prophets in New York have 
been holding forth successively at Cooper Institute on 
Liberal Christianity. I saw the report of Bellows's lec- 
ture ; " Unitarianism is the denial that Jesus is God, but the 



MEMOIR. 



99 



affirmation that he is the Son of God, and only Mediator." 
I am glad you like the " Bond and Free " in The Radical. 
You will see Clarke's criticism in the December number. 
My answer comes out in February. 

April 24, 1866. 

I have been preaching in Cincinnati to Conway's old so- 
ciety. They are munificent in their hospitalities, and I 
spent a charming month with them. It quite enlightened 
me as to the West. I saw the under-current of American 
life breaking up and modifying sects and creeds, as prepa- 
ration for an American religion based on human nature 
in its largest representation and free expression. I am 
amazed at the growth of freedom among the Jews. For 
instance, they seem to be coming out on our ground. You 
can easily see how this should be. Their pure theism sep- 
arated from Bibliolatry and Messianic literalism is the 
same with ours. The many sects, especially foreign ones, 
in the Western cities modify each other greatly ; and even 
the materialistic set of enterprise on so vast a scale seems 
to me bound to prepare the way, by absorbing men in 
'physical law, for the recognition of God in this world, from 
which the old theologies have banished Him. The Conti- 
nent will, at least, reaffirm Nature. And I have full faith 
that the grand morality of our political idea, as we are 
compelled to interpret it, will force the religious sentiment 
into natural channels, and make materialism issue out into 
a spiritual faith. Human nature is the great watchword in 
this country, and we are bound to make the most of it re- 
ligiously also. 

April, 1866. 

I have seen Niagara at last, though under clouds and 
rain only, yet in the very climax of its winter glory. The 
low circle of falling waters, as a whole, did not move me 
as most seem to be moved. It was so large that I compared 
it, I suppose, with what is larger still — the ocean ; or, 



100 



MEMOIR. 



perhaps, the weather was too unfavorable. It was when I 
thought of it, rather than when I saw it, that I felt its 
greatness, as a whole. But the ice-bridge and the great 
ice-dome, formed by the falling spray, right under the Amer- 
ican Fall ! ! I saw these in perfection, in the very close 
of winter. I stood on this dome, sixty feet high at least, 
and looked up to the waters descending out of the sky, and 
down into the impenetrable abyss where they fell thunder- 
ing, and out of which came, whirling up like volcanic fires, 
great volumes of spray, far above my head, to descend in 
rain of sleet swept by the wind round me, and falling in 
fair and perfect lines of construction to build up this beau- 
tiful shape. That was magnificent indeed ! And then to 
cross the river on an ice-mass, that looked from above like 
the Grindelwald-glacier, or the Mer-de-Glace on a smaller 
scale ; and to see the wondrous green and amber of the river 
above and below the fall, contrasting with the snow garment 
and the ice mail, — all this amply compensated me for the 
lack of summer verdure and the sunshine that would not 
come. 

TO ME. AND MRS. GORHAM. 

July 25, 1866. 

I have just heard the tidings of your great bereavement, 
so sudden and so peculiarly painful in its circumstances. 
All my cherished recollections of your pleasant home come 
over me, and the affliction which so darkens it presses upon 
me as a personal sorrow. . . . 

I know indeed how it is. We repeat to ourselves and 
others what we are sure is so true of the dear love of 
God ; of the beautiful meaning of death, the natural up- 
ward step of spiritual life ; of the compensations time 
must bring for present desolation of heart ; of the higher 
faith, the calmer trust, the wider sympathy with others that 
spring from these bitter furrows. But the heavy change 
that has fallen on the outward life and the earthly home, 
remains ; and none of these divine assurances can alter the 



MEMOIR. 



101 



fact that it is most hard to become wonted to the new re- 
lations that bind us to beloved ones who have passed from 
our sight. And yet I know I shall not intrude too much 
on the privacy of your sorrow if I come and sit beside you 
in spirit, and tell you how I feel about this dear boy for 
whom you mourn. 

This at least is sure : you cannot make him dead ; you 
cannot feel that he has gone from you ; and with all the 
heart-sinking you cannot accept the thought that your love 
and care are to know no more return from him. I wish I 
could tell you how firmly I believe that feelings like these, 
so often treated as illusion, are true, are of God's own ten- 
der giving ; that in them is the very heart of his teaching 
through the mystery that we call death. Our affections 
are forbidden by their Maker to doubt their own immortality. 
What protest they make against the destruction of what is 
still intensest reality to them, when all that the senses could 
hold by is gone forever ! Never, I believe, do we so feel 
the impossibility of real separation from those we love, as 
then. Should we ever know the rights of the affections 
but for this ? Immortal years, beside which our little lives 
are but an hour, — what possibilities of full satisfaction 
they open!, And we sit in patience, knowing that they 
must bring us back our holiest possessions, — those which 
have ever stood under the shield of our noblest love and 
conscience, and so are under God's blessing forever. The 
best part of ourselves has not been given us for nought. 

Shall not the Love that gave this beautiful child know 
how to make His promise good? This was just the nature 
that points surely onwards and upwards ; whatsoever de- 
serves to expand and rejoice in the heavenly laws was here. 
I cannot dream of failure or defeat where Heaven was so 
pledged. Here, if anywhere, is the life that holds ties 
unbroken, promises ever guaranteeing themselves. To you 
henceforth, dear friends, in all your earthly loss some things 
are clear, some gains secure. How near those heavenly 



102 



MEMOIR. 



mansions of a freer growth beyond physical perils and 
bonds, must come to you ; hid but by a sacred veil that 
seems ever ready to be raised ; how near, even when they 
outwardly seem so far ; how real, how full of dear familiar 
life ; how free of all that strangeness and fearfulness that 
are so apt to gather round the thought of the transition that 
comes to all ! In the peaceful life beyond, what treasures 
are laid up, assured to you by all the omnipotence of God's 
love ! 

I cannot help thinking of youth as itself the eternal 
state of the pure in heart ; and so, the change that comes 
to those who pass thereto, all fresh with the very dew and 
sunshine of the heavenly morning of life, it seems to me, 
must be the least possible. I am sure that on the image 
fixed forever in your hearts there can never fall a shadow 
as of years, no wrinkles of age, no burden of cares and 
toils ; it will stand transfigured in its own happy light, 
and you will feel the presence most truly in your mo- 
ments of deepest trust, of truest loving work. 

When I think of your saddened home, I remember also 
that your hearts are closer than ever to the Infinite Heart. 
I think of this, — that they have committed their beloved 
to the Care that taught them how to care for him ; to the 
Love that gave their love, and gave it that it might not 
perish but have eternal life. Of compensations that will 
come, as you wait for the healing hand which touches only 
to heal, for the inward light that rises when the light of 
the household seems to have gone out, — how should we 
try to speak to you now ? But may we not take your 
hands to say gently — " God will comfort you and make 
your strength equal to your day ? " 

to . 

December, 1866. 

. . . This loving Care that folds in our little lives, how 
near it comes when we need it most ! I feel as if it held 



MEMOIR. 



103 



you now in a tenderness such as none of us can know, and 
none know how to ask for. u The night will be light about 
you," calling you to what trust-like sleep, bringing out 
holy eternal stars ! . . . This life that has been with you 
so long, close within your own, must still be yours. The 
hidden helps, the invisible influences, the serener support 
that the deeper, diviner needs of your soul call for, must 
come to you from her higher powers, as surely as her dear- 
est associations are with you and the little ones in whom 
you both alike live, as surely as God is true. Soon may 
the infinite Motherly Love make the heavens open where 
they are most darkened now, and the angels descend on 
your saddened home. I know you well enough to know 
that the hour will bring you the strength you need. I 
know that you will, more than ever, know how to help the 
weak who faint amid the mysteries of those laws of life 
we call death. For only the uplifted face of one who has 
tasted these waters and found them divine, can help such to 
faith. . . . Here, in the border of the heavy loss, and the 
change it is so hard to bring into the daily ways of life, 
feel as much as you can, how many hearts there are that 
would come and sit with you, as near as they may, with 
their best sympathy and faith. And, among the nearest, 
count one for whom your presence was always helpful, and 
your fidelity and manliness a constant assurance of the 
best. 

TO S. L. 

December 25, 1867. 
A happy Christmas to you. . . . The pictures dropped in 
at the moment to make them special benedictions. Yester- 
day my sister A. was married, and left us for her new home 
in Manchester with one who, I am sure, will make her a true 
and loving husband. We saw them off at noon ; and then, 
you will imagine, came a stronger sense of what I had lost 
from my side, — a presence whose daily influence and help, 
all my life long, has been more to me than I can ever tell or 



104 



MEMOIR. 



ever know. And so I was feeling somewhat lonesome 
when your kind gift came with its sunshine to make me 
doubly grateful. 

My arm is improving, though I am still the "Armer 
Mann " in many essential respects ; not having yet a nat- 
ural feeling in the shoulder, nor any great amount of mo- 
tion in the arm, nor freedom from pain, especially at night. 
Yet I have thrown aside the sling, and make frequent ex- 
cursions to Lynn. I have still a sense of debility and 
languor, which I think is passing away, though writing is 
still difficult. Shackford is supplying for me. I am 
anxious there should be such preaching as will keep the 
people interested. 

TO J. W. CHADWIGK. 

October 6, 1869. 

Not till a few days since did I hear of the sorrow through 
which your Marblehead home is passing. . . . These ties 
which make the unseen more real than the seen; these 
flowerings of the affections into the claim of immortality, 
as their justification ? these surrenders that change personal 
anxiety and care for beloved ones into inviolable calm and 
win us the future past all fear of loss, — who that has 
known these would doubt the divine benignity of what we 
call death ? 

I know how much your sister has been to you. . . . And 
now it will all be spiritualized and made part of your 
eternal life. And you will know how to reap its still, ripe 
harvests, and to make them cheer and refresh a world that 
needs nothing so much as spiritual faith. God bless you, 
my friend, in this new trust and resource. 

I have spent the summer vacation at Mt. Desert, and 
had never a more delightful one. On all our New Eng- 
land coast, there is no spot that combines so many charming 
features as this knot of mountains set in an archipelago of 
pleasant islands, in a bay protected from all sharp winds 



MEMOIR. 



105 



save one, the south-east, which rarely blows. ... I am so 
busy that writing to best friends even, seems quite out of 
the question. What is friendship if it could not take for 
granted that silence and separation only deepens its in- 
terest ? 

TO S. L. 

July 11, 1871. 

I must renounce all excursions this year, except that, 
at the end of August, I shall have a week at Nantucket, 
being invited to prophesy two Sundays on those sea-girt 
sands. That will be all new to me. I have had no other 
invitations, and my preaching since giving up at Lynn last 
July — a year ago — amounts to just three Sundays, all 
told. 

The Music Hall experience was refreshing. I had a 
grand, earnest audience, and the congregational singing was 
inspiring. 

I have been reading Weiss [American Religion'] with 
delight, and the other day sent him an enthusiastic letter. 
I wish I could review his book, as Morse would like to- 
have me ; but it is just what 1 cannot do. 

I have been reading with great enjoyment the translation 
of Dante, with the entertaining notes and illustrations. I 
never enjoyed Dante before, and had given up expecting 
to do so. 

November 23, 1871. 

I was gratified by finding you liked my " Labor " article 
in the Radical so much, and saw so clearly the very points 
that were of most moment to myself. Something or other 
about it seems to have attracted more attention than is 
usual with my lucubrations, and Morse had money given 
him to reprint it in pamphlet form. It ought to have been 
out a week ago ; but, like everything else that depends 
upon labor promises, has been greatly delayed. 

By the way, I have in my possession for your behoof, 
and waiting your pleasure, one enormous moiety of our 



106 



MEMOIR. 



profits from the Fields and Osgood mine. The amount is 
one hundred twenty-four and a half cents each ! O bloated 
capitalist, I will inform Ben Butler of thy monstrous 
gains from the sweat of poor men ! And my friend Wen- 
dell Phillips (see Standard for Nov. 4) admonisheth me 
that brain-labor is overpaid, and that they who live by it 
are clothed in purple and fine linen ! 

TO R. H. MANNING. 

December 3, 1871. 
I can't trouble you now with labor discussions, and will 
only say how glad I was to receive your article, and that 
I read it with the greatest pleasure. I am thoroughly 
pleased with what you say of the comparative uselessness 
of legislative restrictions, the mischiefs of legislative agita- 
tion with a view to instantaneous revolution in labor rela- 
tions, and the necessity, if we want to have better institu- 
tions than we now have, of first " deserving them." You 
say truly that there can be no " royal road " to right sys- 
tems of distribution. I agree with you that the great need 
is, of good practical education ; and with all my hate of 
centralized power, I do think the State should insist upon 
educating the masses, in the best way possible, for the duties 
of the citizen. 

TO MISS LUCY OSGOOD. 

October 17, 1872. 
If you find the book [the India~\ attractive reading as 
well as historically instructive, that greatly adds to my 
comfort in thinking of its prospects in this busy age. It 
has cost me labor enough, that is certain ; yet it is a labor 
of real love, combined with an intense sense of a great de- 
mand from the side of spiritual culture and higher relations 
of sentiment and imagination, in the present condition of 
the races calling themselves " Christian." I hope I have 
done something to stimulate these forces, and help toward 



MEMOIR. 



107 



the grand interpretations of natural religion that are yet to 
come. 

TO S. L. 

October 17, 1872. 

Thanks for the kind favor of sending me the College 
Courant What an appreciative spirit the notice of my 
book shows I So large in sympathy, and so clear and fine 
in recognition of the best things I have tried to say ; the 
quotations, too, very aptly selected. Who is the editor of 
this magazine ? I see he speaks with cordiality of Abbot 
and Voysey» Right under the windows of Old Yale have 
we such universality ? 

Have you seen Ripley's notice in the Tribune ? He 
quotes two columns full and makes some very friendly re- 
marks at the close. I am glad everybody recognizes that 
the book is for the people as well as for scholars. 

I hope you got admission to Tyndall [then lecturing 
in Boston]. What pleasure there must be in hearing him, 
the poet of science and the best of demonstrators on the 
platform ! 

December 29, 1872. 

This desperate cold snap paralyzes one's very human- 
ity in its pith and substance. Oh for the " lands of sum- 
mer beyond the sea " ! 

Higginson came here in a snow-storm last week and 
spoke, supperless, to a little flock at the old Lyceum Hall, 
giving an entertaining and sympathetic story of his Lon- 
don experiences. I had a very pleasant talk with him of 
European visits, personages, etc. 

I am in doubt what to preach at Frothingham's, but, on 
the whole, I shall choose practical ethics, and try to show 
how every man ought to be in his true place, and how 
America, in her educational methods, denies and abjures 
that sacred fact. I shall just go over on Sunday morning 
from Brooklyn to Lyric Hall. 

Oriental Religions I hear nothing of in this busy world, 



108 



MEMOIR. 



where books are pouring down like a summer shower, 
and men put up their umbrellas against such big ones 
as mine, as they would against hailstones of the "hen's- 
egg " species. Nobody advertises the book except Osgood 
in his lists ; but it may be selling for all that, and in spite 
of The Nation. I do not see a word in English literary 
journals about it, and doubt now if I shall do so at all. I 
have not seen a copy of the second edition yet. 

I have just received O. B. F.'s fresh volume, Hie Re- 
ligion of Humanity. It is very eloquent, full of pictur- 
esque and effective writing, clear, strong, and tender, and 
singularly full of the finest thoughts of the time. Have 
you read it ? I would like very much to know how the 
essay on " Christ " strikes you. I like it the least of the 
whole on some accounts, though it is one of the most 
striking. He thinks the Spirit of Humanity is rightly to 
be called " the Christ ; " thinks, too, Humanity may be 
mortal, perishing with the planet. 

TO . 

December 30, 1872. 

I learn that the gentle sufferer who has so long been 
made happy by your devoted care, has been called into 
those interior spheres, where indeed the calmness and 
sweetness of her spirit have already seemed to you to be 
dwelling, as in its constant home. Out of your mortal 
sight, but still in the arms of your unchangeable trust and 
love. There, too, her home. 

Dear friends, the household that was so bright to me in 
years that have long gone by, seems, in the shadow of this 
sorrow, over-arched by a serene and heavenly presence, 
sure as anything can be to bring compensations in energy, 
patience, trust, and spiritual sight, for the outward loss you 
must so keenly feel. 

In the mysteries of our mortality what helpers like the 
unexpected, unpledged resources that come, only when they 



MEMOIR. 



109 



are needed, out of great hidden reserves of power within 
us ? So near, they prove, is an Infinite Life which father- 
hood and motherhood and all our tender kindredships are 
given us to suggest, to interpret, to reveal. When I think 
of the loving, parental watchfulness which lcng ago sur- 
rounded the invalid in her great weakness and dependence, 
and the cheering and strengthening influence with which 
she repaid it, spreading around her an inward health in 
such contrast with her physical weakness, and when I re- 
call the steady growth of her rare powers of mind and con- 
science, of cheerful fortitude and spiritual vision, I cannot 
but feel, that the constant sense of this mastery over the 
weakness of the flesh by the vitality of the spirit, must 
have been to you all the secret inward preparation for a 
moment when you have so much need of its strong assur- 
ances of her immortality and immortal youth. 

Of so many years of mutual helpfulness and pure sym- 
pathies, how precious and living the record will be in your 
memories ! How it will arouse and sustain your every 
effort to pursue still the home-paths of love and duty, on 
which she will still smile, and that interest in all public 
hopes and efforts of progress which she must still desire 
you to feel ! How the coming of the unseen life will be 
freed from all shadows, so that it shall dawn at last " famil- 
iar as your childhood's dream " in the light of those treas- 
ures laid up for you within the veil. 

TO S. L. 

May 31, 1873. 

On the whole not so satisfactory a meeting [of the Free 
Religious Association] as some others I have attended. My 
own performance in it was a poor failure, but I have writ- 
ten lately under some disadvantages, and am always out of 
place at popular conventions. Gannett, whom I heard and 
saw for the first time yesterday, pleased me very much. 
... If you think of anything I can do to improve the 
India for a third edition, of the speedy need of which I 
am advised by Ticknor, please write. 



110 



MEMOIR. 



September 28, 1873. 

I have been very sick this whole summer ; first at An- 
dover for a month nearly, then at Salem where I had a re- 
lapse into amazing weakness. I could scarcely walk a 
portion of the time, and could eat nothing, my tongue was 
in such a condition, but lived on liquids. But within a few 
days I have begun to mend fast, and was able day before 
yesterday to go to West Roxbury. 

Do you speak this coming winter at Horticultural Hall ? 
Miss Stevenson told me that they want me to read my 
lecture on Transcendentalism. And, — more because of a 
sort of sense that such things are just now much to the 
purpose, and, even if imperfect enough, will serve as a 
needed testimony on the spiritual side against the confused 
and dire materialism of many, — more, I say, for this rea- 
son than from any desire I have to re-appear on that or any 
other speaking platform, I said, yes. 

I am happy in being shelved from pulpit or other similar 
demands, since it gives me freedom for studies and plans of 
publication that are more suited to my nature, and demand 
undisturbed labor for some time to come. China grows 
under my hand ; books and researches and opportunities 
open ; much is of the highest interest. The Tao-te-king of 
Lao-tze grows grander as I see its bearings on Chinese con- 
servatism, and as an indignant protest of the spirit against 
the traditionalism of ages. There are Chinese philosophers, 
too, whose ideas singularly unite old mysticism with a pos- 
itivism and rationalism that brings them home to the mod- 
ern experience we are passing through to-day. ... So you 
see I am quite reconciled to being left out and dropped 
from preaching-desks and lecture-stands. 

And I have no time for newspaper controversies such as I 
see A wants to get me upon. Did you see his prepos- 
terous interpretation of my saying (in the F. R. Association 
essay) that God and man are not to be held as essentially 
distinct existences external to each other? As if, because 



MEMOIR. 



Ill 



God and man are one, there can be no distinction of In- 
finite and Finite as polarities within the one divine life. I 
do not know whether it is worth while to try to set him 
right. Nothing is ever gained by explaining what you 
have said. 

December 28, 1873. 

Who will take Agassiz's place ? There are many better 
philosophers, deeper thinkers, but none with the power, 
through prestige and enthusiasm both, to do so much in 
awakening the people to scientific studies. 

I have been reading lately with great interest two very 
intellectual and liberal books by Morley, — Voltaire and 
Rousseau. I have not for a long time seen such broad, 
clear, thoughtful, suggestive estimates of personal charac- 
ter. His writing God with a small g is a curious anomaly 
in such a man, and has set me to thinking. Is it not a 
grotesque sign of the transitional theology of the time ? 
Morley is a kind of spiritual positivist, and his mode of 
dealing with men and things is to me extremely interesting. 

Have you read Martha's La Poeme de Lucrece? I 
have found that very attractive also. Lucretius interests 
me more and more, as the great mind of that age, and the 
prophet of science, as well as the foe of the old gods. 

January 28, 1874. 

As usual I was clubbed and left for dead by the report- 
ers. What is the sense of speaking your beliefs to one or 
two hundred persons, if it but gives the chance to make 
you speak to the newspaper-reading public such silly plati- 
tudes and such utter falsities ? If they would but let us 
alone, it is all I would ask. Think of my being made to 
say that " Christianity was transcendental, but Paul mate- 
rialistic " (!) and that u professional ideas are transcen- 
dental," etc., etc. 

Your sermon last Sunday impressed me as full of the 
timeliest and clearest statement of the great reconciling 
principle — which we should call Spiritual Pantheism — 
between Infinite Mind and Impersonal Law. 



112 



MEMOIR. 



March 22, 1874. 

The discourse [on Charles Sumner's death] came out ad- 
mirably from the press. I see that J. G. [in the Common- 
wealth'] finds me guilty of " bad taste " and " painfulness " 
in expressing my dissent from Mr. Sumner on the Greeley 
movement. I hope nothing like indelicacy or harshness 
was really suggested by any infelicity in my language to 
those who heard me. I cannot find anything which I 
think I ought to alter. 

June, 1874. 

The F. R. A. proposes a course of practical lectures for 
the next winter, in which lecturers on opposite sides of each 
question shall be heard in succession. They want me to 
take one side of the labor question and Phillips the other, 
for instance. I have objected to the sensational element 
and the apparent antagonism, etc., which strike me very 
unpleasantly in the plan (this, doubtless, not meant wrong- 
ly). I suppose they will think me crotchety ; but how else 
save by " crotchets " shall one keep out of this incessant 
drift and pressure towards catering to popular tastes for 
exciting ways of doing things ? Perhaps it will not strike 
you just as it does me. 

I wish you could have been at the Commencement and 
Phi Beta Kappa exercises this year. I am just home, vi- 
brating with joy, first at a charming disquisition by Fenol- 
losa of Salem, of the graduating class, on Pantheism, which 
would have cheered your soul, as would the immense ap- 
plause which followed his unqualified advocacy of Panthe- 
ism in its highest and purest form ; and, next, at a noble 
oration (<£. B. K.) on " The Relations of History, and the 
question how far it has been a Progress," by Professor C. 
C. Everett. I never heard him before, and was delighted 
both with his matter and manner. He is so thoughtful, 
earnest, simple, and sweet, and his thought so clear, vigor- 
ous, and vital. Cranch gave a beautiful poem, as you might 
expect, full of enthusiasm and imagination. Altogether, 
Cambridge seemed to me this vear to be " looking up." 



* 



MEMOIR. 113 

Like yourself, I thought Arnold's attempt to make the 
old Bible of the Hebrews serve the cause of Impersonality 
was audacious enough. 1 dislike his perpetual mouthing 
of watchwords, and his spirit towards the two poor bishops 
he was always pecking at with extremely little sweetness or 
light. I have just been reading his later work on German 
Schools, which has a great deal of interesting information. 

October 1, 1874. 

Last Saturday, such serene level light on the russet 
woods and the still harvest fields filled the afternoon air 
with a kind of brooding soul. I wonder if you were out of 
the city crowds so as to see and enjoy it. 

I heard John Westall interpret Kaulbach's great picture 
[the original cartoon of " the Reformation "] at the Spanish 
gallery rooms, last week. It was good to hear the kind, 
earnest tones and see the fine enthusiasm for art and poe- 
try, even if there was a little old theology mixed in which 
jarred a little. The picture itself in parts is fine, but sadly 
lacks ideal unity. 

So busy have I been that I have not read Conway [the 
Sacred Anthology]. I was astounded to find no recogni- 
tion of immortality. 

December 22, 1874. 
Oriental Religions yields the prodigious sum of fifty 
dollars for the year 1874. . . . Have you read Adams's 
book on Democracy in France? His theology crops out 
in rather unfair judgments of Voltaire and others, but 
he understands the French character very well, and the 
book will help along the movement, which I am glad to see 
is gaining strength, toward holding American " equality " to 
duties as well as rights. 

North Andover, March 2, 1875. 
This is an " old-fashioned " winter. Shut up day after 
day to a prospect of white fields and bare woods, with dis- 
8 



114 



MEMOIR. 



tant houses apparently unpeopled, — varying the scene by a 
daily walk to the railroad station to get my newspapers, — 
I learn the blessings of having a task that does n't require 
city sights and locomotion. I work away at an advantage. 
But to-day what a triumphant assertion of the royalty of 
winter, — a great white throne ! 

I am glad Legge's Mencius is out. Prosaic as it is, we 
have nothing else thereon half, nor a tenth part, so good. 
So I shall get on now very well with the " classic " part of 
my materials. 

North Andover, May 13, 1875. 

I have just finished my chapter on "How the Chinese 
4 Make History.' " There is no encouragement for printing 
another volume in the sale of the first. But the pleasure 
as well as the duty of writing it remain not materially dif- 
ferent, I think, from what they would be if such encour- 
agement existed. This spring and summer, I have pretty 
fully worked up the topics of Language and Literature, 
Poetry, the Shi-king, the Shirking, and the History in 
general, from my MS. notes which all lie ready to be used, 
to the end of the work. Religion and Philosophy are now 
about all that remain, as the closing up of the subject. 

I am reading a new and very interesting work by De 
Coulanges, author of La Cite, Antique, on the Political In- 
stitutions of Ancient France. It is in the clearest and 
most incisive French. I have never read so complete and 
satisfactory an acccount of the old Roman Empire and its 
administration. It is quite original, and shows how naturally 
the Roman imperium grew up out of the demand of men 
in that age to be governed, and how perfectly it met the 
wants of the world. Also, how it contained the germs of 
all subsequent European history in matters of government 
and social institutions. 

March 1, 1876. 

Dr. Felix Adler called to see me, yesterday, and talk 
over his proposed essays on Hebrew Theism. I was much 



MEMOIR. 



115 



pleased with him, — a live Jewish radical of culture and 
apparently much sweetness and reverence. 

I attended on Monday the funeral of Dr. Ahlborn's 
youngest child, the loveliest little fellow, swept away by 
this terrible scourge of diphtheria. Dr. Bartol spoke very 
tenderly and beautifully. 

His own words, too, on that occasion, — preserved 
by those they comforted, — were most tender and 
affectionate as well as full of sustaining faith and 
hope. The following were a part of them : — 

" The beautiful young life that is lifted out of our sight 
into the heavenly fold is very dear to me, and I shall share 
the pleasant memories in which it will be enshrined, and 
that silence of thought in which the benedictions of the 
angels fall. We would lift our thoughts above the shad- 
ows of mortality, and the outward semblance of death. . . . 

MEDITATIONS. 

Through all the mysteries of our earthly lot, we would 
ever feel ourselves embosomed in the Infinite Strength and 
Peace, that with fatherly wisdom and motherly tenderness 
upholds and guides us, like stars in the sky, through our 
changes of night and day, of sunshine and storm. 

We would strive ever to commit ourselves to the serene 
and perfect laws that guide our human destiny, assured that 
what our nature appoints must be better for us than aught 
else we can desire or dream. 

Whether we walk in the morning light, or in the night 
shadows, — over, around, and beneath us are spread these 
Everlasting Arms. „ . . How strong the assurance that 
what is bound up with our life and makes a dear part of 
our being, cannot be wholly lost ; that it must answer to 
the love in which it is more deeply than ever enshrined ! 
How real becomes the unseen world, no longer unfamiliar, 
but warm with the treasures and light of home ! How we 



116 



MEMOIR. 



look through the half-opened gates, into its glory and its 

peace, where the innocence and beauty of childhood must 
dwell in the life of which they are the image ; and the ties 
that here seem broken must be preserved in the love that 
made them ours ; and the powers we would have trained 
here must be unfolded in the same care that inspired our 
striving, and will not let it be in vain. . . . 

Nor would we forget that by this tranquil mystery 
which we call death, we are brought the closer to a sense 
of an infinite calm of unchangeable good in which we must 
confide ; on whose bosom, with our beloved that have fallen 
asleep therein, we can rest, sure of compensations flowing 
from the Life that can comprehend the depth of these affec- 
tions it has implanted, and the bitterness of earthly loss. . . . 

IX. 

Meanwhile, in 1876, a change had taken place in 
his circumstances. The death of his father, breaking 
up the home in Salem, rendered it desirable that he 
should take up his residence on the ancestral farm in 
North Andover, which was bequeathed to him and 
his younger sister. The old homestead, which had 
been put into good condition, stands about a mile 
from the village, at the junction of three roads, its 
front windows commanding a wide and pleasant out- 
look. In the rear stretch the farm-fields out toward 
the woodlands. On a small green before the house 
stand two immense elm-trees. The country around 
is gently rolling, with many green lanes and fine 
views from the hill-tops. Here he established him- 
self, setting up his library in a western chamber. 
And here he passed the remaining years of his life ; 
keeping more and more closely at home, faithful to 
his work and his duties ; welcoming the visits of his 
friends; gratefully enjoying all the good that came 



MEMOIR. 



117 



to him ; cheerfully and uncomplainingly bearing his 
cross. He interested himself in carrying on the 
farm, taking part sometimes with his own hands. I 
remember an experimental cranberry patch which he 
showed me with some pride. This out-of-door life 
soon told favorably on his health, if, or because, it 
drew him away a little from his studies. When he 
came to see me from time to time in Cambridge, 
bringing with him often some installment of MSS. 
for the printers, I gladly noticed that he seemed 
better and brighter. His studies went on, his gen- 
eral reading, his correspondence ; occasionally he 
preached for his neighbor and friend, Mr. Clifford. 
At times his studies were interrupted or made diffi- 
cult by recurrence of attacks of sickness ; but with 
him ill-health was never an excuse for idleness. 

to s. L. 

September 17, 1876. 
My little group of Swiss ware — chamois great and 
small, and old peasant people — stands in idyllic rest over 
the time-piece in the new study, and serves to suggest en- 
during moments in this swift flight of days. My summer 
has been very busy with its great change of place, occupa- 
tions, and duties. My library is arranged in the delightful 
old chamber, looking out under our grand elms over the 
hills and through the valley, straight across the far sounds 
and softened images of the city of looms and spindles 
[Lawrence] to lovely ideal hills that rest in the sunset 
glow. And here in these autumnal days is a wood-fire in 
the Franklin stove. Farm work and cares manifold some- 
what interrupt the movement of Oriental Religions. Through 
these practical and positive surroundings, I find myself quite 
as much involved in the elements and functions that make 
up actual life, as in what seemed a larger sphere. And I am 



118 



MEMOIR. 



rapidly learning to measure work by its " qualitative quan- 
tum," as Hegel calls the essence of thiDgs, rather than by its 
relations with the world. What I shall miss will be certain 
city opportunities, so pleasant to enjoy with friends. . . . 

I confess nothing has so disgusted me as the conduct of 
the so-called Independents, and the persistent abuse of the 
President [Grant], who, in my judgment, would at this 
moment make a better man for the coming struggles than 
Hayes. I find that, on every point where he has been as- 
sailed, waiting for a fair verdict has convinced me that he 
was nearer right than his adversaries. 

1876. 

I want to show you the petty improvements I have 
made here this year ; only in part of the Hibernian style, 
" main strength and ignorance," whereof I have consider- 
ably more of this one than of that other. I have, too, a 
pretty fair showing to make of Oriental matters, being on 
the final copy of the latter end chapters. ... I have no 
invitations to supply pulpits, and am quite content without 
this public work, to which I am more and more unsuited in 
these days. 

Like you, I am annoyed by the excessive minute analysis 
of mental states and personal positions in Daniel Deronda. 
I think the excess of this is more conspicuous than in her 
other books. But how wonderful it is ! Her dramatic 
power, by which I mean the self-abdicating, other-mind-rep- 
resenting faculty, seems to me nearest Shakspeare's of any 
writer in the English tongue in the present generation. I 
have not yet finished the book. But I expect tragedy and 
the sense of disappointed ideals, with the old grand Greek 
pointing up through all to the nobility of that which fails 
on earth. 

I have lately been studying the Pessimism of Schopen- 
hauer in various books. The most inconsistent and self-de- 
structive syncretism that was ever called a system ; yet full 
of interest, from its points of attachment to other systems, 
and from the genius that breaks out in points and jets. 



MEMOIR. 



119 



February 4, 1877. 

I was especially sorry not to find you in on Friday, for I 
was on my way to Wilson's [the printer] with my big 
Chinese baby ; a half-scared carpet-bagger, burdened in 
body and mind, and I wanted a bit of encouragement. Do 
you know, this book is coming to light without hint, sug- 
gestion, or mechanical aid from living man or woman? 
Not a step in the process could I commit to any one but 
myself ; not from choice, but from the necessity of the case. 
But before putting some fifty pages or more in Wilson's 
hands, I wanted to talk with you on a few points. If you 
thought I was wise and not foolish, I should have trudged 
to the printers with a lighter heart. 

The winter has proved hard, here in the country, and the 
old farm-house could not be made tight this first year. My 
stove has worked badly, and I have had to worry through 
the coldest part of the winter. Eskimo-fashion, I have built 
a hut within my Arctic world, a caboose around my fire. 

I have been reading Maine's Early History of Institu- 
tions. Like all his works, it is full of meat, close packed 
with mature, suggestive thought, and beautifully complete. 
No modern writer on such matters compares with him. I 
am now in the middle of the new book, Supernatural Re- 
ligion, which is a very keen argument against miracles, 
and a wonderful storehouse of critical and exegetical au- 
thorities on the New Testament books and early Church 
writers. These things in the midst of Chinese studies, 
which, chapter by chapter, are pushing along. 

June 9, 1877. 

I sent the last proofs [of the China] in from Boston 
yesterday, and came home with a sense of lifted cares, till I 
began to think of the probable fate of the heavy craft I was 
launching before the hasty practical American world that 
will only tolerate what it can measure, and absorb, with a 
" touch and go." ... I mean to be prepared for the evil 



120 



MEMOIR. 



fame of attempting so much, without knowledge of the forty- 
thousand characters of the Chinese script. If I knew 
these, I should know nothing else. In the way of psycho- 
logical interpretation, I should be simply nothing. 

TO R. H. MANNING. 

July 7, 1877. 

It is refreshing to see your familiar graphy, and the long- 
ing comes over me, so often felt, for a good chat in the pleas- 
ant old home in Clinton Avenue. . . It would be vain 
for me to tantalize myself in the old bookstores. I have 
just sold out stocks to pay the stereotyper's bill of nearly 
two thousand dollars for China, which I fear you will think 
a great folly in a shelved man with an income scarce able 
to keep him. Well, it does look like a " tempting o' Prov- 
idence," I allow, to write books that most people will vote 
dull at sight — to spend so much in getting them out with 
little prospect of demand. All I can say in excuse is — 
that I cannot help it. And if I get a good word back from 
friends like you, it is a reward worth living and working 
for. You will see, at least, that I have not been lazy, and 
that I have had a purpose in some earnest, poorly as I suc- 
ceed in showing it to the many. 

I may get a chance to run on to Brooklyn some time 
this summer. But you know what a farmer's life is ; and 
I have more than that to look after. 

TO S. L. 

July 16, 1877. 

Wilson is paid by the sale of stocks, and Osgood has done 
very well in advertising. The notices, so far, are excellent. 
Ripley in the Tribune is admirable ; he credits me with ab- 
solute freedom from partisan spirit, and from attempts to 
get up a case for private theories, and with writing in the 
pure interests of truth. I wrote him an acknowledgment. 
... I have no fears but you will say all that is fittest [in 
the Atlantic"]. 



MEMOIR. 



121 



I wish I could come to the mountains, but must give up 
all that sort of thing for home cares and duties, and the 
stress that comes of literary expenses. It would be de- 
lightful to climb the hills and siesta in the glens with you, 
as of old at Willoughby, and still better in blessed Switzer- 
land. Perhaps the good days will come about again, in 
the spirals of time. 

Are you not coming to see my elms and hills ? I am in 
the midst of deadly war on the Colorado beetle, who fights 
to the end of the chapter. I have spent days in clearing 
slugs from my vines, but I have saved them. Haying is 
over, with successful results. I find the Andover people 
charmingly kind. Clifford is a treasure ; I hear him 
preach with great enjoyment, and he is personally even 
more than his rare preaching. Do come and see me ; the 
woods and prospects ask me where you are. 

February 19, 1878. 

I am working away, as you will believe, not in pros- 
pect of any reward, but the doing of my own work and the 
good word of a few friends. This theme is largest of all. 
I should call it Iran rather than Persia, but shall not. I 
am back among the cuneiform tablets and the sources, as 
I find more and more, of the religious history of the world, 
and especially of the great " historic faiths." 

Winter wears beautifully on, with its prodigality of sun- 
shine, and its spice of flying snows, and its wide white pros- 
pects by day and cold clear moonlights. 

Would that the gift were in this helpless tongue of 
mine to speak the right word in these wretched political 
abysses and be heard ! 

May 26, 1878. 

For me, farm-labors use up my energies, I find, so far 
as sometimes to interfere seriously with my disposition for 
literary work. I am learning the arts of limitation, how- 



122 



MEMOIR. 



ever, and am well along in Assyrian, Babylonian, and the 
rest of late Iranian discoveries. The interest of these cu- 
neiform revelations in their bearing on Western religions 
— which I find nobody, so far, among the investigators has 
any idea of — is surpassing. I wish I had you here for a 
day or two, at the least, that you might see whether I dove- 
tail agriculture and literature respectably. ... At all 
events, I am happy in farming and writing, and glad to see 
other men get on to more purpose where they are fitted to 
succeed. A special gift is that of the preacher, and a glo- 
rious opportunity, on purely independent ground. 

TO R. H. MANNING. 

July 1, 1878. 

L. wrote of pleasant talks with you about public affairs 
and the hopeful way in which you looked at them. There 
is need enough of affirmative judgments now. Some things 
might teach us the meaning of Shelley's counsel — 

..." to hope, till hope creates 
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates." 

It is a mercy that we have seen the end of this Congress, 
scandalous as the last scenes were. I think we must have 
touched bottom now, and shall look for re-actions to finan- 
cial and moral sanity as well as political. 

I still hold my Turkish sympathies as against the co- 
lossal Raider of the nations, and only find fault with Eng- 
land that she did not sooner put her trident across the spear 
of the centaur Cossack galloping on to St. Sophia. (See 
Nast in Harper's Weekly.) He is mad with drinking that 
blood-broth of "Peter's Will." I think, as matter of 
European policy and of the interests of civilization, that the 
Turks will be more fit to govern the many races of the 
Ottoman Empire, and more likely to maintain religious lib- 
erty and constitutional government . . . than the Russians, 
whose church is the most intolerant in the world. 



MEMOIR. 



123 



TO S. L. 

August 18, 1878. 

I am sweltering in summer heat, haying, gathering, 
watching unruly cattle, trying to keep my lawns neat and 
my roadsides pleasant, warring against Cossack hordes of 
insects, while making all the moments possible for the 
ideal world of Persia, Assyria, Babylon, and the evolution 
of Religions out of the Fire-mist of Iran. Is not that a 
function for a shelved preacher after all ? Sometimes, when 
I read the daily news and see what the " Hayes policy " 
is doing for the solid South, and what the Butlers and 
Kearnys are trying to do with the ignorant classes of the 
West and the East, I wish I had a thousand tongues in- 
stead of none at all. 

For what is called public work I have small respect. 
The noise comes to very little, and the ebb of culture and 
honor in our American politics, literature, and trade, must 
go on, doubtless, for its day. Reaction is salvation, and it 
will come ; and when it comes, shall we not see better 
things than the rule of the blind led by the base ? 

How I should enjoy talking with you of Germantown 
and the new experiences ! It has been vain for me to think 
of seeing you there. I am bound closely to my perch. 
Possibly in October I shall run up to the hills, the everlast- 
ing hills, that will wait for us as long as we desire. . . . The 
elms and the green hills here are so luxuriant and magnifi- 
cent, this rainy summer, that I am ashamed to ask for bet- 
ter things of the mountains and the sea-shore. 

Wasson wrote a review of China for the North Amer- 
ican, which the editor accepted, kept it six months, and at 
last sent W. the money and declined to print it at all. 
Triibner advises me to print a cheap edition for the Eng- 
lish market. I don't like the idea for such a book, and am 
willing to let it go altogether. 



124 



MEMOIR. 



TO R. H. MANNING. 

January 6, 1879. 

Alas that the " holidays " should have passed and brought 
no pleasant Brooklyn days. As one grows older, his feet 
are weighted with other leads than those of age ; and his 
fetters hold him back from ways he is still fresh and strong 
for treading. I had intended to accomplish this second half 
of my summer rambling immediately on returning from the 
mountains, but found my plan must be abandoned. By the 
way, my little raid on the Franconia Hills and up and 
down the [White Mountain] Notch on that grand air-line, 
— if it be not rather on eagle's wings — was delightful. 
If you ever get leisure for a ride a little beyond the trav- 
eled track, in our New England Switzerland, don't fail to 
go to Sugar Hill in Franconia, where a real mountain house 
(Goodnow's) puts you at the right focal distance from the 
two great ranges. I caught the foliage of the Notch in the 
very moment of its transfiguration, and looked back from 
Conway in a splendid moonlight upon the first snows of 
Mt. Washington. As we live by the sharp contrasts of 
Nature and Life, I wanted directly to plunge into the roar 
of New York. Was n't it natural ? 

When Byrant died, I thought how much I had received 
from those two poems of his, so exquisite both, and yet so 
different, — ■ Green River and the Hymn of the City. From 
my boyhood, both have been singing their way through my 
experiences in country and town, by the trout-stream arid in 
the street, and even made up between them a kind of nat- 
ural music for the study itself. Poetry is the true mystic, 
and makes all times and scenes flow together into one. 

My watches about the " Sacred Fire " of Iran are prov- 
ing attractive, as I expected ; though there are many shad- 
ows flitting round those far mountain altars that it is not 
easy to grasp and hold fast. The worst of studying the 
Avesta literature is that it is still so far from being satisfac- 



MEMOIR. 



125 



torily translated, though five or six of the best Orientalists 
in the world have tried their hands at the work ; and we 
have here very little outside help from contemporary his- 
tory. Gleams of light and beauty tantalize one through 
the mists that no linguistic astronomer has yet resolved. 
But the grand threads are traceable that bind the Western 
religions to the Iranian hearth. 

You " sometimes wish that you were a student." I am 
sure that you could have done nothing better than what 
you have brought about in active spheres ; even though 
you had " wagged your pow " in a pulpit. You would 
have been the first to make mince-meat of the clacky hand- 
organ-men of the creeds. No book culture would have 
kept you from the worship of Law, natural and spiritual 
(if you will allow the bad antithesis, for bad it is, — physi- 
cal and spiritual rather). Certainly, you would have been 
logical enough to throw overboard the miracle, and broadly 
intellectual enough to dismiss the narrow personalities of 
the creed. By the way, if you want to see what a hotch- 
pot mess can be poured and simmered together on a plat- 
form, read one — not more will I ask — of Cork's fulmina- 
tions, ycleped Monday Lectures. 

Russia, I think, must be reflecting by this time on the 
question whether, under home circumstances, the raid on 
Turkey was the wisest thing she could have done. A few 
concessions [at home] to liberty and the " constitutional 
government " she was so determined Turkey should not 
enjoy, might have made Nihilism and Young Russia in the 
universities more tractable. I must say I cannot share the 
Gladstone fever of so many English Liberals. Beacons- 
field is no saint and no model, but in this matter I find my- 
self going strongly his way. Between the Jew and the 
Evangelical — which is quite another matter — I think you 
would guess which is theologically nearer my notions. 
Beaconsfield is, however, not much of a Jew as to belief. 
But speaking of Jews, did you see that magnificent shaking 



126 



MEMOIR. 



of Carlyle — till, I should think, his teeth must have chat- 
tered in his head — by one Edward Solomon, in the New 
York Herald? I believe Carlyle had asked bow long Eng- 
land " was to have a miserable Jew dancing on her belly," 
and this was the answer. I think I should hold my tongue 
ever after, if I had been so answered. 

... As a whole, the family " go in" for the letter game ; 
only glad sometimes to crave a mitigation of its length, 
when the pool is desperately full of unmanageable "issues." 

TO S. L. 

March 26, 1879. 

I did not know Weiss so intimately as many, but I feel a 
sense of great personal as well as public loss. That mag- 
nificent imagination and noble instinct of liberty and grow- 
ing clearness of vision always directed to the future, and 
that splendid battle-call to the best, — how we shall miss it 
all in the coming days, amidst public degeneracy and the 
turning away of men's minds from noble ideals ! He had 
the divine madness, the prophetic cry ; a consuming fire of 
moral indignation, and the tenderest pity ; the abandon of 
genius, and the subtle, delicious humor that saints are al- 
most sure to lack. He illumines the forward track £or 
all of us. I, for one, " cannot make him dead." 

April 14, 1879. 

The warm wind bringing spring haze and birds, and the 
stir of the sod greets us to-day. Soon the dagger of Jam- 
shid must be plunged into the ground, following the sharper 
and mightier edge of the sunbeam. I really see the affinity 
of agriculture with Zoroastrian symbolism, and find the two 
ends of my work meet ! 

June 29, 1879. 

Your warm interest in my " Transcendentalism " [in the 
Radical Review~\ was indeed a gratification. Frothingham 
wrote me at the time a most enthusiastic letter declaring 



MEMOIR. 



127 



that if that was Transcendentalism, he was a Transcenden- 
talism And C , who is now groping in the half-light 

of John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, and speaks of 
Transcendentalism as " a star gone by," wrote me cordially 
though not just to the same effect. Stevens gave it the warm- 
est recognition, except, perhaps, Wasson's. I mention F. 
and C. only as illustrations of the change that is going on ; 
the drift, I call it, of American radicalism into organization, 
reliance on numbers, utilities, outward forces, experience 
included, as contrasted with personal, interior, ideal values. 

0. B. F.'s implication [in his farewell sermon] that the 
old demand for individual power and purpose had had its 
day, needs more to explain it than his own sense of having 
said all he had to say, in twenty years speaking, to one 
people — as you put it. I look upon his shift of emphasis 
as part of a drift, as I said, into which the radical mind of 
America is moving. ... I am pegging away at Assyria 
and the farm. 

October 19, 1879. 

I read the introduction to Max Miiller's new series of 
Translations of the Oriental Scriptures, and did not like it 
at all. He entirely ignores the valuable translations which 
have already been made ; and I was especially amazed that 
in this first volume, which is devoted to the Hindu Upa- 
nishads, he should have made no mention of Roer's pre- 
vious translation of them printed in the Bibliotheca Indica 
at Calcutta many years ago, which you may remember I 
used in my India. This is as bad as Dr. Beal's saying, in 
his extraordinary review of my China in the Nation, that 
these philosophical writings have never been translated ! 

I am making much use of a French translation of the 
Avesta by Harlez, which strikes me as more careful and 
thorough, as well as more comprehensible than the others. 
I have also used Haug and Spiegel. Bleek, you know, 
simply copies Spiegel, whose method, taking the commen- 
tators for his guide to the mysteries of the old Bactrian 



128 



MEMOIR. 



language, is opposed by Haug, and appears rather question- 
able. Spiegel's great work, Er-dnische Alterthumskunde, 
is a vast mine which I have explored, as I did Lassen's 
corresponding work on India ; but it lacks philosophical 
value, as, in fact, do all books on the old Oriental Dualism. 
I am at work now upon Mani, the terrible bugbear of the 
Christian world down to the twelfth century. To be a 
Manichean was worse than to be a Jew, and to meet a 
more cruel fate. Yet Mani's aim was universal and eclec- 
tic, and the ascetic morality of his followers as good as 
any of their time. 

TO R. H. MANNING. 

February 22, 1880. 
Our friend Chadwick has gained golden opinions by his 
last book. I enjoyed the brave spirit and the graceful and 
forcible style, and found multitudes of fine things in it which 
he puts in that spontaneous poetic way, always so charming 
to me. He meets many of the profoundest problems that 
none of us can " boult to the bran ; " and I do not find all 
his conclusions and explanations satisfactory. I wrote him 
especially about his change in regard to Transcendentalism, 
which I don't think he states at all as I should state the 
doctrine. 

In fact, the disciples of " science " and of "intuition," of 
" transcendentalism " and " experience," have in general, 
it seems to me, but little comprehension of each others' 
ideas. The whole subject stands in need of that prelimi- 
nary course of definitions which Plato said was necessary to 
all discussion, and without which, discussion would be end- 
less and profitless. Not that there is no difference between 
the position of the two sides : there is probably a considerable 
difference, and one that has lasted through two thousand 
years and more. But, the points of difference not being 
seen, no mutual influence nor understanding is possible. 

Everything, almost, in our present heady way of per- 



MEMOIR. 



129 



sonal dispute and platform extempore appeal to multitudes 
who are unfamiliar with general views of the subject, is in 
a muddle of words and phrases extremely agonizing to those 
who try to use words in their strict and rational meaning. 
The style of most writing is newspaperish ; and the main 
point with the writer is that which the newspaper leading- 
article has always in view, — how to keep the attention of 
unthinking people up to the mark of following something, 
by all devices of sharp, startling, or antagonistic notions, a 
perpetual sword play. . . . Concede a point to most advo- 
cates and they think you weak. There is no strength but in 
desperate one-sidedness. By and by, when the fever of com- 
petition is tired out, there will be clear, calm thinking, and 
a philosophy will emerge worthy of the New Age and the 
New World. 

to s. L. 

February 22, 1880. 

The telephone wires run by my windows, but they get 
no further toward Germantown than my neighbor Stevens's 
mills. I fear that Edison and the like will not greatly 
serve the turn of Transcendental preachers, shelved or stir- 
ring. I opine that, for this very reason, I am the more capa- 
ble of recognizing the over-haste of science, physical and 
mechanical, to annihilate those sacred spaces and periods to 
which the personal virtues are more indebted than the 
times believe, for disciplines of faith, patience, and trust. 

Speaking of Transcendentalism reminds me of Chad- 
wick's book on Religious Problems. I found it abounding 
in good, brave, and beautiful things ; but pervaded by a 
tone, or rather tendency, which so troubled me that I 
wrote him in full about it. He seems to me to be drifting 
as the American radicals seem to me to be doing as a body ; 
following the popular current instead of leading it on to 
better things. For this contempt of reason as above under- 
standing, of substance as against phenomena, this denial 
of direct or intuitive perception of realities even the most 
9 



130 



MEMOIR. 



universal, is certainly the high road to materialism. And 
a Spencer, apart from his gift at generalizing phenomena 
and mechanically arranging them, seems to me a, mere 
word-monger and pompous announcer of truisms in the 
name of solutions. For my part, a commonplace label on a 
heap of materials is none the more satisfactory to me for 
being expanded into a string of long Latinized terms ; and I 
am outraged by the pretense of having explained what one 
has only stated over again in a swelling tone. Meantime, 
the solid ground of substance is cut away from under foot, 
and the infinite free spaces shut out by a new " firmament," 
worse than the Hebrew one in Genesis ! And we who in- 
sist that there is no " supernatural " in the nature of things, 
that miracle is an absurdity on its face, are called supernat- 
uralists by men who can digest, without a sign of wonder, 
such irrational or preternatural notions as those of a world 
of phenomena without substance, of things seen and touched 
without a faculty beyond understanding to bridge the way 
from ideal to real, of a moral philosophy based solely on 
calculations or on observed causes and effects, and on devel- 
oping the whole conception of duty out of a synthesis of 
consequences ! Would it be surprising if minds that have 
been led by " science " into taking up with pride such as- 
tounding irrationalities as these, should make their next 
jump into the pleasant fields of an external Catholic church ? 
Weft, I wrote Chadwick that I did not comprehend his 
treatment of Transcendentalism ; and he wrote me a kind 
note in return, promising, some day of leisure, to lay out 
the matter more clearly. 

I get on with my Persia as well as I could expect, hav- 
ing this winter been wrestling with the obscure and impal- 
pable relations of Manicheism and Gnosticism with the early 
Christian Church. Now I am on the pleasanter track of 
the Shah-Nameh, and at the doors of Sufism, etc. Oh, for 
the mental spring and freshness of days gone by ! 

You can keep up these by your constant, refreshing con- 



MEMOIR. 



131 



tact with the people, and the thought of your great city 
through your platform on the Sundays. It is friction and 
stir which brings thought, as well as power of expression. 
It seems to me the latter fails first, for lack of the accus- 
tomed stimulus of contact, and the former slowly but surely 
follows it. Moncure Conway has written to me to send or 
carry something in shape of essay to the conference of 
Liberal Thinkers in London next May. I have written so 
many things that nobody thinks of reading, that it seems 
simply an absurdity to put out any more. And to go to 
London is impossible. 

TO R. H. MANNING. 

February 26, 1880. 
Just one word, to remove a misunderstanding respecting 
some, at least, of Grant's supporters. I for one do not favor 
him because I think the South needs to be put down or pun- 
ished, but simply as the best protector of the nation against 
imminent dangers to its life. Gen. Grant seems to me to 
represent that precise position, between " over-severity to 
the South," and what I call a panic-stricken spirit of con- 
cession, . . . which is indispensable to national dignity and 
firmness. I desire no other "aggressiveness" than the vigi- 
lance which saves liberty. 

TO J. HENRY BUFFUM. 

1880. 

What a royal time you must be having ! Your descrip- 
tion of the Alleghanies almost makes my eyes water. I 
weep when I remember, not Zion, but the " everlasting 
hills," wherein for so many years gone by my soul delight- 
ed. I have seen something of the Alleghanies, having 
crossed them through endless woods years ago ; but I never 
went up the historic valley of the Shenandoah, still less ex- 
plored the mystic land beyond. I enjoyed especially your 
description of the old stately Manor house at Luray, monu- 



132 



MEMOIR. 



ment of what human and physical changes ! . . . For me, 
I celebrate my elms and the low, sweet Andover hills. 
" Whene'er I take my walks abroad," what fresh wonders 
greet my eyes ! The shades grow deeper every year, and I 
look out in the moonlight through the wonderful tracery of 
these stately boughs with a new sense of the true perspec- 
tives of life. The city tides roll by in the valley beyond 
the invisible river ; and I have but to mount the neighbor- 
ing hill to watch the sunset on mountain sides in the far 
horizon. But I 'm not a Quietist ; don't imagine it. Never 
was there so much to do, so little time to do it in ; and I 
grudge every moment that does uot tell. The Oriental 
Elephant is close at hand to claim every spare sliver of 
time. The future must determine whether I was justified 
in undertaking so absorbing a charge. I should shudder 
when I think of its probable doom, did I not remember 
that at least I have had my reward in the pleasure of ex- 
ploring the fields into which it has called me, and in watch- 
ing the flow of universal laws through history. I certainly 
can expect no other reward ; and on the whole am glad 
that I cannot. 

to s. L. 

July 2, 1880. 

Alas for these ecclesiastical functions, whose demoraliz- 
ing influence extends not only to the clipping down of high 
thought to the miserable span of half an hour, but to dock- 
ing down your remittances of the golden coin of epistolary 
conversation to mere semi-yearly shreds ! But even the 
shred is homoousian, and to a spiritual Pantheist conveys 
the whole substance from which it flows. Pause here ! 
Never allow yourself to be forced by American restlessness 
and hate of continuous mental attention into a spurious com- 
pactness which sacrifices thoroughness to the art of nudg- 
ing sleepy pews. Far rather cut on 0 hymns, scripture, in- 
vocations. 

You wish I might have been with you a little to wander 



MEMOIR. 



133 



up the Wissahiccon, and recall the blessed days of Shanklin 
and Freshwater Bay ! Ah me! the bonds the Parcae weave 
about me closer and closer still, they will not loosen till 
Atropos gives her scissors to the final cut ! 

By the way, speaking of European memories, who 

should turn up at Commencement but M O , 

the blessed youth of Italy. . . . You slay me with the 
words Mount Desert ! 

I jump from pillar to post. Let me tell you what drives 
me almost distraught, — this seeing the labors of one's life 
at leaving an honest and clear record and standing in the 
world for what one is and believes, crushed in a moment 
in some irreparable way. The other day a letter from a 
Presbyterian lady asked for light on the circumstances 
which led to the production of my hymn, commencing 
" Saviour, in thy mysterious presence kneeling." I have 
written calmly to the reverend Dr. who compiles the Pres- 
byterian Hymn-book for putting a radical of thirty years 
into the ranks of pronounced Orthodoxy. 

TO R. H. MANNING. 

July 11, 1880. 

It seems very long since I have seen you all. I am 
tethered like my own unruly cow ; yet I am not unruly, 
only — what the Latins used to call their farm-servants — 
" bound to the soil " — adscriptus glebce. Come and see my 
Homeric oxen, and the potato-field, that has cost so much 
precious time. The harvest looks promising; oats, corn, 
and hay have answered, so far, to our desires. But 
little time remains, or strength either, in this ingathering 
season, for far-off Iran and its heroic poetry and the raid 
of fiery Arabs on the old Eastern world. I have finished 
my tale of Firdusi's great Epic this spring and summer, and 
I wish it might tell something of what a grand national 
Epic may be and do. 

Probably if I lived in New York I should feel as you do 



134 



MEMOIR. 



about " the machine." But for my soul I cannot see any 
more machinery for one candidate than for another. It is 
all bad, this machine- work in everything here in America. 

Not the least so in " Free Religion." Here is A , who 

has been trying to run that machine, organizing the Eternal 
Truth into " Liberal Leagues " and drumming up recruits. 

. . . You cannot hold the light in your fist. And A 

retires disappointed from his Index, and the great morning 
moves upward in the open sky. Alas, the " Free Religion- 
ists," like the politicians and the manufacturers and the 
traders, are utilitarians ; they want immediate concrete 
effects, labor-saving, time-saving, conversions to Truth and 
Good, neither of which can come otherwise than by personal 
insight and discipline. This wretched business, this squab- 
ble over the vices of officials and representatives of the 
National League — what possible connexion has it all with 
the progress of universal Religion and the culture of man- 
kind in ideas and beliefs ? I think A will be more 

in his true place in writing freely and directly to thinking 
men than in trying to organize the unorganizable. 

I agree with you about the plans of the Democrats. And 
the thing looks very serious. What they desire to do, they 
have full opportunity and tremendous temptation to do. 
Nothing but a mighty public expression against them will 
deter them from doing what they tried unsuccessfully in 
Maine, and are trying with full success and Northern Re- 
publican encouragement, in every Southern State, all the 
time. 

Thank you for the excellent obituary of George Ripley, 
who deserves to be called the master in criticism. What a 
long, noble, faithful, and comprehensive work he has done! 
Who is to tell the story ? Some one who has known him 
well, I hope, and who will do him justice. He was as 
tender and true a gentleman as he was a just and all-seeing 
censor of the literature of the day. 

You rejoice that Grant was defeated. I should put it 



MEMOIR. 



135 



perhaps to the same effect, but a little differently. I mourn 
that the outrageous proceedings of the men who set them- 
selves up for his henchmen were not rebuked by the grand 
old soldier. But I should have been very unwilling that 
he should receive the nomination through such manoeu- 
vers as Conkling, Cameron, and Logan undertook to put 
through. 

October 17, 1880. 

I have been sick all summer, with persistent splanchnic 
woes ; and finally had to go to the White Mountains for a 
change. And such a change ! Such glory in the autumn 
forests, such grand snow and frost transfigurations of the 
rock-faces and the eternal pines ! From Kearsarge on the 
South, from Lisbon Heights on the North-west, I saw the 
ranges as I had never seen them before ; in their true re- 
lations, from without instead of within ; and at a distance 
which gave full dues to every shoulder and peak and out- 
line and lifted mass. Of course I left all bodily miseries 
behind me, and returned a wiser and a sounder man after a 
week's enjoyment of the true season for mountain travel. 

It was not till the other day that I learned that your 
good sister, that true saint of the living gospel, had passed 
away from your sight. . . . You will miss her — how con- 
stantly and deeply — in your home, so long blessed with 
her sympathy and encouragement in all high aims and 
pleasures. But you are too thoughtful and too experienced 
in the art of arts — that of reconciliation with the laws of 
life and the paths of nature, as the best laws and paths for 
us all, — not to find the consolations that the years bring 
with them to those who have asked only to know the truth 
of our being and to. conform thereto. Give my sincere 
sympathy to all your family. 

March 20, 1881. 

I have been all the winter at work on the universal rela- 
tions of the great Mahommedan faith, its defects and their 



136 



MEMOIR. 



parallels with those of Christianity. I assure you, a 
great subject, whether or not I can get a hearing for it, 
and any recognition of my own eye to the future, as well 
as the present, of belief and science. 

Glad to hear from J. W. C. I read his sermon on the 
Christian name in the last number of the Index ; and I 
wish I could say it was more satisfactory to me than it is. 
It seems to me that his reasons for adhering to the name 
were very inadequate, and would make any proper change 
in name from one positive faith to another impossible. He 
first says truly that we know little or nothing about Jesus, 
and then he bases Christianity and its fitness to survive on its 
relations to his personal character. He makes science (free 
and impersonal) as truly an evolution from this hypothetical 
conception of Christianity as are the doctrines of Roman 
Catholicism, with its logical central Christ, and the church 
that follows from his New Testament claims ! For my 
part, every day I live, the name Christian seems less and 
less to express my thought and tendency. I suspect it will 
be so with the Freethinking world generally. As for mak- 
ing out Unitarian, at this stage, to mean larger liberty 
than Christian, as some are doing, — that seems to me an- 
other attempt at stretching Og's bedstead, so that the good 
radical fellows may all lie down in it. 

Czar Alexander's death is a truly Greek Nemesis. Rus- 
sian history is bound to be a tragedy ; not a new one, for 
thousands of exiles are groaning in Siberia, and as many 
heads have been struck off to save imperialism. Now the 
red stream takes a new track, that is all the difference. 
And probably this is not the end. Nevertheless, I do not 
want these Nihilists, nor the International Labor League, 
hereabouts. Like ill-trained dogs, they don't know friend 
from foe, nor wisdom from folly, nor faith and honor from 
conceit and rage. 

My articles in the 'index fail to keep P to the points 

in hand. It is of very little use to try to set anybody right 



MEMOIR. 



137 



nowadays. But there is something in saying your say 
and leaving it. 

to s. L. 

June 5, 1881. 

Your notice of Carlyle's Reminiscences just expresses my 
own feeling. They showed how capable he was of ideal- 
izing those near to him in the tenderest and most childlike 
way. Much of what has scandalized the world is due to 
dyspepsia ; but much to the amazing keenness and truth 
of the criticisms themselves. Think of that inimitable de- 
scription of Wordsworth ; and Southey could not complain. 
Coleridge and Lamb both really had their deplorable sides. 
I read the whole book with intense interest, of course some- 
times with pain ; but it did not hurt my admiration or grat- 
itude. I think in many ways it enhanced them. Have you 
read Wylie's charming book [on Carlyle] ? Read it if you 
have not. I am on thorns of impatience for Froude's vol- 
umes of the letters. 

The Revised New Testament has a great many remark- 
able improvements on the old text. Other changes are 
questionable. Some, at least, shear Jesus of his nobility. 
Note what a change is made in Matt. xix. 16, 17. Others 
strike at dogmas. Hell loses some of its terrors. The 
translators have been honest and brave. A host of verbal 
changes add greatly to the clearness of the text. And of 
course the effect on the doctrine of literal infallibility is 
decisive. 

I am greatly struck by the contradictions that are grow- 
ing up in the Evangelical mind under the influence of the 
progress of learning and science. Reading Stanley's Chris- 
tian Institutions and Robertson Smith's Lectures on the Old 
Testament, I find their intense Christian prejudice jars in 
upon the fine poetic insight of the one and the astonishing 
critical keenness and breadth of the other, in a manner 
that must soon make itself felt in inward conflicts of a very 



138 



MEMOIR. 



sharp and convulsive kind, for them and for others at a 
similar stage, on the border land. 

I hope you have read my letters to Potter in the Index. 
I am wearied with the folly of the present drift of the " Free 
Religionists." What do they mean to do with the foun- 
dations that all freedom must stand upon, — personality, 
progress, transcendental perception, and law? These are 
all forgotten in petty " crystallizations," or else mentioned 
only to be abused. 

As for health, I hope for better things, But last win- 
ter's troubles have so taken hold of my lower limbs that I 
cannot use them for any length of time. I think I am 
gaining. I am certainly taking my best care to that end. 
How lovely the world is up here under the great elms and 
the green hills I need not say ; it only waits for you. 

TO R. H. MANNING. 

January 8, 1882. 

This last year has been rather a hard one. After a 
whole spring and summer of sickness, the journey into the 
mountains and then to Brooklyn did me real good, which 
was so helped on by a fortunate medicine afterwards that I 
have gained exceedingly, till about a month since, when 
suddenly there caught me a rheumatism or neuralgia in the 
chest from which I am still suffering. 

I am busy at the old work ; a great deal that must be 
read and thought over and made the most of, for what I am 
weak enough to think are philosophical uses. " I hope to 
be spared till," etc., as the tiresome old commentators of 
the Bible were wont to say. But I won't admit that my 
writing is commentating. If it can only be true and large 
interpretation of human history, that is all I ask. 

O. B. F.'s recent words and ways I don't wholly under- 
stand ; though I can see the situation pretty well. I sup- 
pose I should only mystify you if I told you that the whole 
proceeding only proves to me how impossible it is for a 



MEMOIR. 



139 



thoughtful man to live off and outside of a transcendental 
basis ; as I think he has been really trying to do. You 
know I find no inconsistency between evolution and the 
original fundamental necessities of all thought, on which the 
transcendental philosophy is founded. Some time or other 
I shall show you how fully you yourself agree with me, 
and I with you. 

To change the topic. I am just full of that delicious 
operetta of Gilbert and Sullivan — Patience. I hope you 
have heard it at least twice. The satire is the keenest, the 
harmony of the whole, lilting music, phrase and dancing, is 
perfect, and the humor so irresistible that it runs in my 
head day and night. And right in the midst of all the 
broad fun is that exquisite little song about the " old, old 
love," which is perfect in tenderness and strength. It is 
singular that such fine and rushing comedy should come to 
us from England, where, we are wont to think, wits are 
slow and conventional. It recalls what I used to believe in 
theory, that the best humor requires the contrasts of an old 
and complex civilization. Yet how we haste, here in Amer- 
ica, to anything humorous, to take off the grinding edge of 
our business and political life. Nobody, but a few literati, 
knows anything about the Swinburne, Rossetti, and Wilde 
school of aesthetics ; yet what a run this satire has ! 

What a pleasant little visit I had at your house ! Old 
friends grow more and more precious every year. 

X. 

The last time that I saw my friend was in the 
summer of 1881, when I spent a delightful Sunday 
with him. The day was perfect. The preacher, 
tired with the year's work and distrustful of his ser- 
mon, had begged that we should not come to church, 
and my time was short. We spent the day in the 



140 



MEMOIR. 



study and among the lanes and hills — talking of 
many things. He read to me some chapters of his 
unfinished Persia, the third and last volume of his 
Oriental Religions. He was in excellent spirits, and 
seemed in rather unusual health. On Monday morn- 
ing he drove me to the station ; we parted there — 
and I never looked upon his face again. 

He died on Sunday evening, the nineteenth of 
February, 1882, after a week's illness, the culmina- 
tion of the disease that had long been upon him. 
The funeral services were held at the Unitarian 
Church in the village, which he had been wont to at- 
tend, rejoicing to find there an independent ministry 
of breadth kindred to his own. Sentences were read 
from the Scriptures of various nations, followed by 
prayer, the singing of his own hymn " I bless thee, 
Lord, for sorrows sent," and addresses from several 
friends. All gave heartfelt testimony to the noble 
qualities of him whom they honored. They bore 
witness to his simple manliness, his stainlessness of 
heart and life, his brave and willing sacrifices of 
place and popularity in the path of duty ; to the in- 
dependence in which he was content to walk alone, 
obedient to the inward law, and faithful to his own 
convictions of truth; to his consecration of spirit, his 
moral inspiration, his unfaltering championship of 
right against every injustice and every form of bond- 
age, his strong spiritual faith and genuine religious- 
ness, his patient cheerfulness under that " shadow of 
the cross which early fell upon his life," his devotion 
of all his treasures of thought and scholarship to the 
service of mankind and the furtherance of all no- 
blest aims ; to the unshaken constancy with which 
he u obeyed the voice at eve, obeyed at prime." 



MEMOIR. 



141 



A few hours later, as the winter day was closing, 
in the city of his birth, the mortal part of him was 
laid away. " Above, tall fir-trees stretch their pro- 
tecting arms, and as the glowing twilight fades into 
the mystic beauty of the cloudless night, the first 
crescent moon of spring-time and the friendly stars 
look calmly down upon his new-made grave." 

But with us who knew him, and with the world, 
remain his work and his character. With us abides, 
as a memory and an inspiration, the genuine nobility 
of soul. With us remains, a sacred and secure posses- 
sion, the profound and elevated thought ; the absolute 
faith in God ; the clear, spiritual sight of things di- 
vine, ideal, invisible, as the realities ; the keen moral 
judgment of men and events, un tinged with bitter- 
ness ; the reverent sensibility to all truly sacred 
things, equaled only by the prompt rejection of all 
that only pretended to be sacred ; the absolute sin- 
cerity and sturdy independence in thought, speech, 
and methods of action, which, while respecting the 
freedom of others, may not always have been able to 
do justice to methods different from his own ; the 
devotion to liberty in all its forms ; the unwearied 
search for truth, and the steady-working industry 
under the burden of bodily infirmity ; the sensitive 
love of beauty in nature and in art ; the kindly sym- 
pathies and warm attachments ; the too modest esti- 
mate of himself and the cordial recognition of the 
good work and worth of others ; the bright mirth that 
lightened out of his habitual seriousness, — all these 
things abide with us, now that the voice is stilled and 
the hand lifeless. Those who have had the privilege 
of his friendship must be ever grateful for what it 
has been, and is, to them. 



142 



MEMOIR. 



" The year is saddened, especially to those of us 
who are in 'life's later afternoon.' But faith is 
strengthened ; for it is not easy to believe that the 
spiritual forces we have known and felt so long are 
conserved only by being translated into other forms." 



LECTURES, ESSAYS, AND SERMONS. 



FLORENCE. 



To Americans, at least, Florence should be for- 
ever the dearest, as it certainly is the fairest, of Ital- 
ian cities. Its history affiliates genius with liberty, 
and identifies ideal life with popular institutions. 
Grimm, the biographer of Michael Angelo, opens his 
work with this fine tribute to its democracy : " In 
Athens and Florence we may say that no stone was 
laid upon another, no picture, no poem came forth, 
but the entire population was its sponsor. Whether 
Santa Maria del Fiore was rebuilt, whether San 
Giovanni gained a couple of golden gates, whether 
Pisa was besieged, peace concluded, or a mad carni- 
val procession celebrated, — every one was concerned 
in it, the same general interest was evinced by all. 
. . . Athens and her destiny is a symbol of the 
whole life of Greece. Florence is a symbol of the 
prime of Roman Italy. Both, so long as their liberty 
lasted, are a reflection of the golden age of their 
land and people. After liberty was lost they are an 
image of the decline of both until their final ruin." 

" Every Florentine work of art carries the whole 
of Florence within it. Dante's poems are the result 
of the wars, the negotiations, the religion, the philos- 
ophy, the gossip, the faults, the vice, the hatred, the 
love, and the revenge of the Florentines." 
10 



146 



FLORENCE. 



All this is true, and more than this. What Homer 
and Shakespeare are among poets, what Plato is 
among philosophers, that was Florence among cities, 
in her best days. A pope, speaking in wonder of 
her great ambassadors, called her the "fifth element 
of the world." 

" Whatsoever may be done, I can do as well as any 
other," wrote one whose name stands for universal 
genius, beautiful in body and soul, not only master of 
all the fine arts, but pioneer of modern science, and 
best physical philosopher of the sixteenth century, 
— Leonardo da Vinci. " Better than any other," he 
might have said, for he is true representative of his 
Florence, where, whatsoever the age could do was 
done, and done in ways matchless then, and to be 
revered still. 

First of Italian cities to assert independence of the 
German Emperor, last of medieval republics to sur- 
render municipal freedom ; first again to yield local 
autonomy for the inauguration of Italian unity ; least 
capable of enduring tyrants, yet least sanguinary in 
revolution; transforming goldsmiths and ivory car- 
vers into monarchs of art, defending her fortresses 
by the military genius of her greatest sculptor ; on 
her right, the tower where modern astronomy began 
in Galileo's night watches ; on her left, the convent 
where Fra Angelico transfigured painting with the 
purest touch art ever knew; proud to claim the 
ashes of her once exiled Dante, and crown with lau- 
rels that wonderful imagination which could turn the 
terrible creed of the Middle Ages into an immortal 
flower and tread alone the spheres of judgment, met- 
ing to every pontiff, king, and lord his place by the 
awful sentence of moral law ; her people always the 



FLORENCE. 



147 



most gentle in manners, pure of speech, and ripe in 
culture among Italians, — Florence is ideal in what- 
ever aspect regarded, and at this day contains the 
choicest of those treasures which Italy offers to the 
culture of the world. Though with less breadth of 
historical significance than Rome, yet her appeal to 
the imagination is more direct, and her relations with 
the future are probably of a higher quality. 

Shall I venture to attempt a portrait with its nat- 
ural setting, taken in the early spring ? 

From distant, circling, purple and amber hills, 
through the heart of a stately city, descends a noble 
river spanned by bridge beyond bridge, whose gener- 
ous arches, each closing with its own reversed image 
in the mirror beneath into a fair oval, lead the eye 
down through glowing vistas into the open sunsets 
they reflect. A wide Campagna of furrowed mead- 
ows and ferny brooks tempts you out and away 
where peasants are lopping their straggling olives 
into graceful urns to hold the tendrils of their vines 
and keep safe the purple clusters ; and straw-plaiters 
sit at their thresholds, with bright-eyed children 
browning in sunshine about their knees, and ruddy 
country girls, sheltering themselves from heat under 
the quaint head-gear of their market burdens, are 
treading the highways with agile steps. Here shin- 
ing hollows brim over with rustic songs, and there 
the very beggar under the Virgin's shrine in the wall, 
with his musical invocations and appeals and his artis- 
tic grace, stirs your imagination quite as much as your 
pity. You saunter among laurestine and hawthorn 
hedges and white stuccoed walls where the wild rasp- 
berry, rose, and ivy weave delicate shadows across 
the crevices, and clinging grasses thrust out gossamer- 



148 



FLORENCE. 



like threads like gold, and startled lizards flash like 
sunbeams in and out. And so you slowly near those 
undulating lines of encompassing hills, wondering at 
their tender transformations and noble masses of 
color. Your eye follows long stretches of solitary 
road leading up their slopes to old towered home- 
steads among cypresses or shadowy olives, or more 
often standing out naked and clear, strong built, and 
guarded by stone lion or leopard roughly carved. It 
lingers on the huddled heaps of long gray wall and 
red and yellow tiles and heavy brown eaves of some 
ancient hamlet, with old church-tower and pierced 
belfry rising above them. It notes how Nature coun- 
teracts the effects of a certain dislike for shade trees 
in these Italian children of the sun which has stripped 
the Apennines of their ancient raiment, doing her 
best to give picturesque coloring to the bare lime- 
stones with her iron and rain, as well as by sprink- 
ling every bank with hyacinths and daisies as soon as 
it is green, and with great rose and purple anemones 
even in February and March. And then it is led 
away to the stately stone pines, so common in Tur- 
ner's pictures, dark domes of foliage lifted high on 
tall bare stems and standing alone, prophet - like, 
on jutting hill-tops, grandly real against the melting 
lines of earth and sky, steeped in the glow of latest 
sunset or earliest morning. At last, from some high 
knoll and in some happy moment, it is blessed with 
full vision of that wonderful Tuscan atmosphere, 
blending the blue of mountain distance with the rus- 
set of bare limestone and the suffusing gold of sun- 
light, into a color for which there is no name, turning 
February into June, and brooding like a benediction 
over a bright illimitable plain, that stretches away 



FLORENCE. 



149 



fertile and populous to the misty heights. The city- 
domes and towers flash back the sunshine from the 
heart of this loveliness where they have dwelt for 
centuries at home ; and in winter the alabaster 
snows of the Apennines, far in the horizon, seem an 
outer garland of lilies, or the white rose petals of 
Dante's dream of Paradise. Is not that a setting for 
the vicissitudes and tragedies of a thousand historic 
years ? 

We cannot wonder that emotional aspiration is the 
main feature of Florentine art, as large dramatic in- 
terest is of the old Venetian, and genuine sympathy 
with nature and social progress, of the art of our own 
time. A tender yearning will be found to pervade 
it all, weighing down the eyelids, dilating the lips, 
and shaping forth the delicately mobile lines of that 
half sweet, half sad type of countenance which con- 
stantly reappears in all Tuscan painting of the fif- 
teenth century, and still looks up into your face in 
every sunny by-way of the Tuscan hill country, so 
that the Florentine peasant boys and girls will always 
hover in your memory like the images of a happy 
dream. 

Here was the fit surrounding of the monk Angelico 
da Fiesole, the most spiritual of Catholic artists, who 
made poetry of theology, who painted kneeling, with 
prayer and vow, for the love of God and man, as 
that age understood them, and failed only when he 
tried to paint sin. His most famous picture is one in 
which serried hosts, in robes of a splendor that is 
simply the outflaming of praise, are breathing their 
souls through lines of lifted trumpets, hastening 
with feet of gladness and faces of glory towards a 
central light, all drawn by the omnipotence of sym- 



150 



FLORENCE. 



pathy into hushed and ordered lines. It must have 
suggested Milton's description " At a Solemn Mu- 
sick": — 

" Where the bright seraphim, in burning row, 
Their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow ; 
And the cherubick host, in thousand quires, 
Touch their immortal harps of golden wires." 

But what suggested the picture ? As I have 
watched the wonderful atmosphere of these Tuscan 
hills, their long lines upheaved on a vast sea of opal, 
wave beyond wave of vital hues stretching away till 
they passed into the mystery where no eye could 
follow and no horizon was, and as I heard the chant- 
ing chimes from a hundred unseen valleys and silent 
nooks, melting as they rose into one musical tone, 
while the brimming, deepening blue received them 
all into its rest, I could easily conceive how the art- 
ist's imagination, though trained to read his super- 
natural mythology into natural forms and colors, 
might well behold those really human hosts of his 
picture ascending and descending within this liv- 
ing glory, and treading these mountains of palpitat- 
ing light, fit vestures of their ecstasies of hope and 
faith. 

Here, too, in these veils of mountain purple belong 
Dante's Circles of Paradise, as I have already said. 
No wonder the exiled poet bore even to his grave the 
unutterable longing to return hither, sternly as he had 
been paying back, in his terrible Inferno, the party 
rancor which had made him homeless on the earth. 
One can fully appreciate the self-sacrifice which di- 
rected his manly letter to friends who had procured 
a remission of the decree of banishment, on condition 
that he should confess his fault and pay a slight fine. 



FLORENCE. 



151 



" Is it generous thus to recall me after an exile of 
fifteen years ? ... If you have found a way by 
which I can return and keep my honor, how gladly 
would I seize it ! But if there be no other than this 
you offer me, to Florence I shall never return. What 
then? Can I not everywhere behold the sun and 
stars, and devote myself to the disciplines of truth ? 
Do I need thus to degrade my manhood ? No, truly, 
I go not so to Florence, even for my bread ! " 

Scarcely less pathetic is Galileo's tower, on a hill- 
top a mile from the city walls. One ascends a nar- 
row flight of stone steps, the lowest a broken capital, 
into a small bare room, the windows of which are 
now bricked in, and thence to the tiled roof of the 
tower, surrounded by a low crenelated wall. An im- 
mense black weather-cock perks its head into the 
air from a corner, as if to mock like the old Church 
at astronomy. Beneath, Val d'Arno stretches away 
towards the soft low hills and western sea. This was 
the reformer's outlook. And what a reform it was, 
that new theory of the relation of the earth to the 
sun ! Texts confuted, dogmas nullified, infallibili- 
ties defied, traditions of two thousand years puffed 
away in a breath ; no up and down in the spaces of 
the universe any more ; the old heavens and hells sent 
to oblivion ; the stable earth degraded to a planet and 
set whirling ; eternal Rome, centre of creation no 
more ; only scientific truth steadfast, all else but for a 
day, — this was what fell from the star courses through 
that artist's " optic glass " into the soul. What sig- 
nified little Italy at his feet, so proud of her immobil- 
ity, yet spinning through space the while ? Conceive 
him looking down upon sleeping Florence with clear 
recognition of the unbelief, the wrath, the penalty to 



152 



FLORENCE. 



come on him from man, then upward to the silence 
and sovereignty of eternal law ! 

But if one would see what Art can do to embody 
the spirit, he must study Michael Augelo's unfinished 
statues scattered about Florence. He will observe 
that this artist's conception seems to have grown as 
he worked, till he despaired of his material. Mi- 
chael Angelo cut straight into his block without 
sketch or model, and as with a divine frenzy, so that 
it seemed sometimes as if the marble would go to 
pieces under his hand, the thought expanding even 
more rapidly within him the while. Could stone 
keep pace with soul ? Every mark of those serrated 
chisels is a quick thought. You stand upon the 
verge of things inexpressible in form. You see just 
where the marble failed as before the pressure of a 
god, yet retaining intimations of the majestic idea 
it could not hold, hovering about it as in spiritual 
presence, perceivable not so much by the eye as by the 
imagination. In the chapel of the Medici family all 
you see is his work. These marbles are monuments 
not so much of the tyrannical and vicious race whose 
name they bear, as of a great intellect flooded with 
heroic feeling. Two of these groups are well known 
in this country by casts and engravings. In each a 
male and female form recline on a tomb, with the 
sitting figure of the prince who is commemorated 
above them. 

They were the last word of Liberty to fallen Flor- 
ence, when Art alone was free to speak it. These 
shapes are cast in superhuman mould. One has 
fallen asleep for very weariness of grief. " While 
power unjust and guilt prevail, awake me not ! " 
Opposite her sits one, like Jeremiah among the ruins 



FLORENCE. 



153 



of Jerusalem. Above, one, the face withdrawn into 
the dark shadow of his helmet, the head resting on the 
hand, which, for whomsoever it is meant, might well 
pass for Art's own image of a Destroyer of Liberty. 
Men have gazed on it with shuddering awe, as if 
none but he who made it could tell the terrible secret 
hidden in that shadow. "It is a spectre," they say ; 
"and what stern remorseful gloom ! What eternity 
of retribution brooding over the consequences of 
crime! " Yes, but do not pause there. As you look 
deeper and draw nearer, a new meaning is disclosed. 
A noble grief seems passing onward into repentance 
and reconciliation, as of one who at last beholds the 
law that from his evil educes good. It was not in the 
genius of art to despair of liberty. The other monu- 
ment is better known. Night, with her head drooped 
under the bent arm and hand, in slumber as profound 
as that in which Freedom has sunk in many an evil 
day ; and Dawn, rising in his gradual might like the 
slow coming of a great thought, like a nation's resur- 
rection, like all awakening of power. In these works 
Florence answers the pretense that the fine arts are 
anti-democratic, that popular institutions cannot in- 
spire ideals of intellect and feeling. 

The world has no other marbles so great as these 
monuments of the love of liberty, no sculptor who 
equals this republican among artists, whose lofty 
philosophy made him regardless of rank and dignity 
in others, and whom popes and princes scarce ven- 
tured to offend. Pope Julius took care to bid him 
be seated as soon as he appeared, knowing well that 
so independent a person would not hesitate to seat 
himself, even in papal presence, if unbidden. Yet 
what a sense of insufficiency to his own ideal weighed 



154 



FLORENCE. 



down his spirit I The tomb of this Julius was to 
have been the most stupendous piece of sculpture in 
the world, and every figure was to embody the soul's 
victory over death. But the plan scarcely got be- 
yond the one great figure of Moses which stood 
forty years unfinished in his workshop, while the ma- 
jestic whole was the nightmare of his hopeless de- 
sire. " My youth," he groaned, " has been lost, bound 
hand and foot in this tomb." Even genius must ac- 
cept limits, — " transcendent capacity for taking 
trouble," Carlyle calls it. In his ideality he was 
truly Florentine, and especially, in that all he did in 
sculpture was emotional and spiritual. As architect, 
it was otherwise. His building was infected with 
the cold, stiff symmetry of the rising Renaissance. It 
was the personal humanity that sculpture deals with, 
that made it his real sphere. His to carve souls in 
stone, not to build houses to set them up in. His to 
melt the rock and make it flow in waves of tender- 
ness, sorrow, and awe. Here he is maturest of artists. 
Raphael only has painted the inspiration of child- 
hood in his infant Christs. But Raphael never 
painted motherhood as Michael Angelo could carve 
it, as in the Medici Chapel group, and the Pieta of 
the Duomo. His whole life, it has been said, was 
composed of four adorations, Art, Vittoria Colonna, 
Dante, God. The last was its " path, motive, guide, 
original, and end." Of Vittoria he says : — 

" Better plea 
Love cannot have than that, in loving thee, 
Glory to that Eternal Peace is paid, 
Who such divinity to thee imparts 
As hallows and makes pure all gentle hearts." 

And he whom tyrants could not force, nor riches 



FLORENCE. 



155 



bribe to the ignoble use of genius, whose wrath was 
terrible where he detected meanness or pretense, had 
yet learned to receive his inspiration as a little 
child : — 

" The prayers I make will then he sweet indeed, 
If Thou the spirit give by which I pray : 
Unless thou show to us thine own true way 
No man can find it ; Father, thou must lead." 

A certain anthropomorphic spirit, natural to art- 
ists, at least in those days, and which has not yet 
learned, in the common conceptions of worship, to 
withdraw before the profounder thought of the In- 
scrutable and Inconceivable, will come more and 
more to be held the defect alike in Michael Angelo's 
religion and in his art. God was to him a man whom 
he could paint and in other ways subject to finite 
conditions. And as Raphael could represent Deity 
in the vision of Ezekiel, as a benignant Jupiter, rid- 
ing on beasts and upborne by children flying through 
the air, so Michael Angelo actually, and with even 
much less success for the cultivated imagination, has 
depicted the Eternal as a personage drawing forth 
the primitive man from nonentity! And this ab- 
surdity has actually been described as superior to 
anything else in the realm of art, in its suggestion of 
the idea of omnipotence ! But these are the extrav- 
agances of ideal aspiration, and we can honor this, 
even where we must recognize the limitations of art, 
in obedience to a deeper reverence before the laws 
of nature and truth. 

In the streets of Florence you cannot feel as in 
other cities. Art here wears a serious countenance, 
and is justified of her children, like justice, heroism, 
or love. What you see was not made in a day or 



156 



FLORENCE. 



for a day. Men were content to spend their lives in 
doing a few things, or even a part of one thing 
only, so great that other ages must be left to end it, 
and a common task and triumph bind many genera- 
tions as one. For they were buoyed up on a popular 
appreciation of genius and labor, which insisted, not 
on much doing but on noble and perfect doing. To 
see that the whole world should come to Florence for 
its best, that nothing was made which by any possi- 
bility another age should have to unmake, — this was 
the strain of each and of all. Ghiberti spent fifty 
years on the bronze gates of the Baptistery, but all 
the years of human history have not produced their 
equal in that kind of work. A hundred and thirty 
years was the Cathedral of Florence in building. 
Architect after architect died and passed on the torch 
of beauty. Even yet it awaits the crowning touch of 
Italy's regenerated genius. On the church of San 
Giovanni the city wrote the words, " This shall stand 
till the Judgment Day." 

Patronage never did for art what this popular en- 
thusiasm effected in the development of genius in 
Florence. Explain it as you will, it is one of the 
ethnological mysteries, like Greek taste and Hebrew 
passion. The credit of Tuscan art used to be given, 
by historians like Roscoe, to the Medici family. It 
was the whole people who bore Cirnabue's picture of 
the Madonna in festal procession to its throne in 
Santa Maria Novella. A colossal marble form sits 
beside the Cathedral Square, looking up at the mag- 
nificent structure in its centre ; and underneath it is 
written : " This is that Arnolfo who, when commis- 
sioned by decree of the people to build for Florence a 
temple which no industry nor skill of man could pos- 



FLORENCE. 



157 



sibly surpass, proved equal to the sublime desire of 
the citizens." Giotto was bidden to build a Campanile 
that should eclipse everything in Greek or Roman 
art. And it is doing him small justice to say that he 
fulfilled the task. Individual guilds of artisans built 
the great churches, and expended more money on a 
single door than would build an American factory. 
Does this look like useless work? Let us remember 
that labor, and not rank, had sway in Florence. The 
skilled artisan held the purse of the state. For 
years no noble could hold office unless enrolled in a 
trade-guild. Although, of course, personal rights had 
by no means so wide diffusion as with us, yet in no 
state of Italy were the people so nearly recognized as 
the fountain of political power. And in none was 
prosperity founded and maintained in so large a 
measure on the basis of popular industry and skill. 
It was not the patronage of kings or nobles, but the 
spontaneous instinct of the producer of wealth for 
culture, that crowned Florence queen of art. 

The Cathedral represents that grave simplicity 
and sincerity out of which all beauty flowed in Flor- 
ence. You will be disappointed at first by a certain 
sombreness in that swelling mountain of black and 
white paneling. But how heroic the scale ! And 
no idle ostentation, no frippery of a day is here ! 
This is built for all time, for all experience ; place 
and sect have no claim here. It is a voice of essential 
humanity, u not unto us but unto Thee be praise.'' 

Now let us draw near, and we see that it is steeped 
in fine tracery of rich mosaic and richer moulding, 
whose low relief and modest color are absorbed in 
the majesty of the whole. It is the inexhaustible 
garner into which age after age has gathered its best. 



158 



FLORENCE. 



Within, scarce one ornament of carved or gilded 
work, scarce one image, painted or sculptured, of 
aught in heaven or earth, breaks the bare sublimity 
of those stupendous columns which probably sustain 
a wider extent of arch and vaulting of vast reaches 
of sombre wall, almost limitless spaces lost above in 
the mystical twilight of the dome, than any other 
equal number in any other edifice ever built by 
man. 

Gothic architecture usually breaks up surfaces and 
scatters the feeling on innumerable aspirations. 
Here thought is concentrated on an absolute Unity. 
It says, like Egyptian Isis, " I am that which was, 
and is, and shall be." 

Savonarola's pulpit-thunder reverberated through 
these spaces ; through these glooms the breathless 
populace beheld his eyes glowing with an enthusiasm 
that seemed preternatural, and abolished fear and 
doubt as it did these shadows of the Temple. Often 
scarce able to reach his pulpit from his cell, the 
place and the work would exalt him with an inspi- 
ration that swept all Florence on its tides through 
the gates of liberty and love ; then, sinking back at 
the close, he could do no more for days. 

This symbolic art neither Protestant nor Catholic 
theology can take up as its own. The life it flowed 
from in the builders was broader than their extreme 
belief. It is only when music, statuary, and painting 
shall be consecrated to the highest personal and so- 
cial experience of man that these arts will dwell in 
grand architecture like this, as nerve and muscle and 
blood dwell in human bodies, — as so many special 
forces of its all-embracing life. 

Close beside this symbolism of Eternal Law is 



FLORENCE. 



159 



Giotto's Campanile, or bell-tower, a pillar of light, 
an upstreaming of world-life, an interweaving of all 
forms of delicate grace that Gothic art ever attained. 
Around its base a belt of inwrought escutcheons 
celebrates the lives of saints and the labors of ar- 
tisans. 

And, fronting both, is the old octagonal Baptistery 
with its plain, pyramidal roof, for hundreds of years 
the city cathedral. This grave and modest structure 
forms the setting for the bronze gates of Ghiberti, 
which Michael Angelo thought " worthy to be the 
gates of Paradise." In each gate the several groups, 
idealizing scenes from Bible story, are set in frames 
sprinkled with statuettes, and all together inclosed in 
a border of animals and plants. There is something 
stupendous in the wealth of dramatic life concen- 
trated in these charming Oriental groups, as well as 
in the casting of so many figures projecting so far, 
and so minutely related to each other. But the mir- 
acle is in the wreathed borders. It is not the accu- 
racy of science merely, not the grace and cunning of 
those flowing lines of leaf and blossom, grass and fruit, 
so handsomely disposed, nor the skill with which the 
living creatures are interspersed among the various 
natural perches, nests and coverts ; it is the genuine 
vitality of the creature and the plant, caught and con- 
veyed into the bronze. These flowers drink dew and 
breathe air ; these little leaves clap their hands in the 
sunshine ; these birds warble and hover and peck and 
brood ; the owl looks through the night with oracular 
eyes ; the squirrel half chuckles over his nut, half 
trembles at the rustle of the spray close by ; the ser- 
pent aims its fang at the startled bird above him, the 
tardy snail bends the rose petal under his cautious 



160 



FLORENCE. 



foot ; insects flit in and out of the foliage, and life 
breathes and beats and flushes through the whole. 
Ghiberti's gates are less the " gates of Paradise " 
than the paradise of real life, of nature and man. 

How faithfully this historic city keeps the sternest 
impress of feudalism in streets now alive with the 
liberty of the better day. The men who built those 
grated Romanesque fortress-palaces, so severe and 
frowning, of Cyclopean stones, their only sign of 
hospitality the questionable one of a heavy stone 
seat running along the front just above the pave- 
ment, their only intimation of joy the heavy iron 
rings inserted at intervals in the wall to hold torches 
or banners on festal days, made no half-way work in 
accepting the stern fact that every noble's palace 
was his castle, stamping that faith into stone so that 
it should not die. We shudder now at the savagism 
of this crude effort at civilization in the ages that 
preceded our social science. But they are types of 
social evolution, not to be despised, lest in forget- 
ting the earlier stages we cease to honor the law 
of growth. Man is there and his work is genuinely 
human. After all, one can respect a barbarism that 
leaves behind it coliseums, or pyramids, or catacombs, 
or Ellora caves, or Florentine palaces to testify that, 
unlike modern barbarisms which have outlived their 
day, it had confidence in its own future, and believed 
that other ages should be taught to honor it. The 
negro slave-pen and the Florentine palaces, in this 
point of view, come under very different categories ; 
and these stately piles bear record, not of aristocratic 
pride alone, or selfish and cruel greed. In the one 
whose chambers beheld the fatal ambition of the 
Medici, Charles VIII. of France, entering Florence to 



FLORENCE. 



161 



impose their yoke on the citizens, received the com- 
mittee of the still unsubdued republic. et If you 
dare to speak so," he said, 44 1 will order my trum- 
pets to sound." " Then," replies Pietro Capponi, 
" we will order our bells to be rung ; " and, starting 
from his seat, he snatched the king's ultimatum from 
his secretary, and tore it to shreds before his face. 
The crowned invader trembled before the unarmed 
citizen and yielded the point. 

The cloisters in Catholic Europe testify to many 
noble aspects. There is enduring meaning in those 
serene and ample arcades ; those plain walls set with 
small lunettes opening out from corridor and cell ; 
those frescoes, the republican element in Roman 
Catholic art, delineating pure lives and martyr 
deaths, the semi-mythological biography of men who 
were really the benefactors of the people in the Mid- 
dle Ages, as they were themselves of and from the 
people ; those stones within which so many thought- 
ful souls have pondered the problem of life and death ; 
those spaces opening upwards only, the drifting 
world shut out ; those green retreats pleasant with 
the changeful bounty of passing seasons, yet them- 
selves unchanged from age to age ; those memorial 
tablets and busts all along the quiet corridors, lead- 
ing from seclusion to seclusion, reminders that there 
were brave hearts and noble heads before to-day's 
trials and tasks, — they are not mere Romish relics. 
I wish we had something analogous to them, only 
secular, not technically religious, on the wild and 
weary beats of American city life. 

The cloisters of San Marco are seven hundred 
years old. Here was the first public library in Italy. 
The monks of San Marco became famous for their 
11 



162 



FLORENCE. 



learning, and the convent was a centre of literary 
pilgrimage. Its Prior was at one time the founder, 
or reviver, of almost every benevolent institution in 
Florence. A society was in existence for the exter- 
mination of heretics. Fra Antonino changed it into 
one for saving orphans and neglected children. He 
founded another for the general care of the poor. 
He was often seen leading a mule about the lonely 
hills, laden with provisions for the sick and suffering. 
And here is his life in fresco by loving hands. The 
painter-monk Angelico illuminated these cold walls 
of corridor and cell with the soul of color. 

Last came a young preacher from Ferrara, of se- 
vere speech and impetuous gesture, who had fled his 
father's house, his medical studies and hope of fame, 
to follow his vision of a palpably approaching judg- 
ment day for the crimes of Italy, papal and political. 
The sentiment and scholarship of these quiet cloisters 
did not tame the ardor which had sought Florence, 
because she was the fiery furnace of Italian passions. 
She heard his lifted voice as one who loves better the 
tune of a pleasant instrument than the thunder of a 
moral rebuke. But Pico della Mirandola, rising star 
of Platonism and chief of philosophy, won and con- 
quered, reported to his adversaries that a greater than 
himself had come. Mythology, of course, awoke at 
the sight of such genius for moving men. It was re- 
ported that a supernatural glory invested his head 
in prayer, and that ruffians went down on their knees 
at his reproof. It was Lorenzo dei Medici, the chief 
of Florence, who invited him to the city, thinking he 
was bringing an ornament to his magnificence, not a 
Nemesis to his pomp and pride. But he took the 
strange, weird Apocalypse for his text ; first expound- 



FLORENCE. 



163 



ing it typically in these still cloisters to novices, 
then to larger crowds in the cathedral, reading more 
and more tremendous meaning into the Bible words 
as the presence of the people revealed to him their 
perils and needs, and sparing no foe to public virtue 
and public liberty. It was in the papacy of a Bor- 
gia, when the Italian republics, dying of corruption, 
were passing over to ferocious nobles and foreign 
kings ; and even Florence, intoxicated by the bac- 
chanal songs of Lorenzo, turned over her carnival to 
debauchery and riot. The convicted conscience of 
nobles and people was smitten, and entered on the 
ascetic reaction to the other extreme. 

Lorenzo tried in vain to silence these Puritan 
thunders. He sent messengers to caution the preach- 
er. " Tell him who sent you," was the reply, " to 
repent of his own doings ; 4 God is no respecter of 
persons.' " The next step was a threat of banish- 
ment ; and the answer to that was, " What is banish- 
ment to me ? Your city is but a lentil-seed on the 
earth. But let Lorenzo dei Medici understand, that 
though I am but a poor preacher and he the chief 
citizen, it is I shall stay, and he shall go." Religion 
was serving liberty and knew its prerogative. The 
chief citizen could not get noticed. Then came un- 
mistakable gold coin dropped into the convent cof- 
fers. And these the incorruptible Prior sent off for 
alms, adding that " for my convent, silver shall do." 
" No soil this for chief citizens to grow political vines 
in." 

Not many months passed, before the great mer- 
chant prince lay on his death-bed at Carreggi Villa, 
out on the purple hills, where, from his frescoed and 
pillared terrace, he could look forth over the glories 



164 



FLORENCE. 



of Val d'Arno and claim it all as the empire of his 
intellect and wealth. Now all was fast dwindling be- 
fore an empire of another kind. There was need, at 
this Catholic death-bed, of absolution for many things ; 
but how futile was absolution, if given through ser- 
vility or fear. All his grandeur would he give for 
one honest, God-fearing monk, whose voice should in- 
deed speak for the Church which, in his thought, 
held the keys of Life and Death, There was but one 
unmistakably so commissioned. And he came at the 
call. " Absolution ? Yes, but not to the unrepentant. 
Earth nor heaven can grant that. Wilt thou pay 
back the funds embezzled from the children's sav- 
ings-bank ? Dost thou sincerely repent of all trans- 
gression ? And wilt thou put thy trust in God ? " 
" All this I do." 

One thing more. " Give back liberty to Florence ! " 

Ah, that is too much. The proud face turns to 
the wall, and the patriot monk departs. Is not 
Florence worth a hundred chief citizens ? And so 
the democracy of religion, in the person of this un- 
awed monk, declared itself stronger than princes, 
irreconcilable with tyrants. 

It was the time, perhaps the very day, when Co- 
lumbus, turning in despair from Santa Fe, after 
eighteen years of vain effort to enlist royal support 
for an enterprise to which the maps of the Florentine 
Toscanelli had inspired him, was suddenly recalled 
by Isabella and bidden forth to what was destined to 
be the discovery of the New World. How fine the 
augury ! Florence unconsciously associates her lib- 
erties with grander political experiments on a hemi- 
sphere yet to rise out of the unknown sea. 

We follow the reformer and his perils. At Bo- 



FLORENCE. 



165 



logna, a lady, whom he had rebuked for interrupting 
his discourses by pompously entering the church with 
a conspicuous train of servants, sent emissaries to as- 
sassinate him ; but their courage failed before the 
moral power of the man. Then he publicly an- 
nounced that he should return to Florence that same 
evening, on foot over the mountains. Overcome by 
faintness on the way, he was restored by a vision 
announcing to him that his mission on earth was yet 
unfulfilled. In the plague which desolated the city, 
he refused to take measures for his own safety and 
remained to watch over those under his charge. 

From his pulpit he continued to sway the masses, 
stilling party strifes, but thundering at the licentious- 
ness and temporal ambition of the clergy. Forbidden 
to preach, he kept quiet awhile, but returned at the 
call of public need. He expelled the Medici, gave 
Florence the freest constitution she ever enjoyed, 
made the French king, at the head of an invading 
army, tremble before his warnings in the name of 
God, and forced him to respect the freedom of the 
city. He established savings-banks for the poor, in- 
troduced the Italian in place of the Latin language 
into public documents, reorganized criminal adminis- 
tration upon a popular basis, and so reformed a licen- 
tious city, that it resolved itself into a theocracy. 
Even Machiavelli, Giannotti, Guicciardini unite in 
unstinted praise of the political genius and public 
service of the inspired monk. 1 But the hour had 
arrived, as the hour will, for nations that wait to be 
scourged into right doing, " when no man could 
work." The reaction came, though for a while he 

1 See full notices of these testimonies in Villari's admirable Bi- 
ography of Savonarola, 1859. Lib. ii. c. v. 



166 



FLOEENCE. 



carried the city with him, against Vatican abroad 
and vice at home. He had suppressed immoralities, 
but alas, had encouraged the religious superstitions 
that are as perilous as immorality. The reaction 
came in the interest of party and aristocratic hate, of 
the passionate revenge of a pope, against whose vices 
he had appealed to the whole Catholic Church, and 
of the deeply rooted vice of a city which could not 
be galvanized into righteousness by a day's religious 
revivalism. I will not here detail the sad history of 
his fall, a sacrifice mainly, after all, to that faith in 
Divine miraculous interposition which he shared with 
that whole age, and which the ages have not yet 
thrown off. He had allowed a follower to gratify 
the popular faith by offering to go through the or- 
deal of flame, to prove his inspiration ; and the thing 
naturally ended in a farce, not to the advantage of 
his reputation. A more real trial by fire was to 
come, and in his own person. I cannot describe the 
mock assizes, the cruel torture, the final horror of the 
scene, when an insane rabble, watching the flames 
swaying round his body in the wind, half expected a 
miracle for his deliverance, and even believed that 
they beheld his hand stretched forth to bless his mur- 
derers out of the tongues of fire, while he repeated 
the crucifixion triumph of love. 

Essentially a spiritual man, a whole-hearted be- 
liever in the immanent presence of God, the omnipo- 
tence of love, and the identity of prayer with all 
noble conduct ; combining the exaltation of a He- 
brew prophet with the simplicity of a child ; march- 
ing straight to the stake as his destiny ; saying 
when a Cardinal's red cap was offered him, " Mine 
rather must be the red cap of blood ; " strangely 



FLORENCE. 



167 



calm in the midst of these terrible civil strifes, when 
every one else seemed a creature of gusty passion ; if 
a fanatic, preserving such hold on the everlasting 
principles of free government as to approve himself 
to the best statesmen and patriots of Italy in his day ; 
if sharing the superstitions of his day, more logical 
than later co-believers, in that he believed his God 
of signs and wonders to be present with signs and 
wonders still. It is not Savonarola alone who iden- 
tifies inspiration with violation of nature, and won- 
der-working with the authority of religion. 

It is touching to see him struggling to direct that 
stormy age, yet drawn by his struggle into the centre 
of the storm, his martyrdom its culmination. His 
face, as the painters have rendered it, is the por- 
traiture of that deep, concentrated passion for self- 
abandonment to which the Christian Church of the 
Middle Ages gave the name of love, a mystic rap- 
ture inconceivable since. He is the Cassandra of 
the last days of Florentine greatness ; his eye caught 
and held by the presentiment of a coming penalty 
on rulers and people, for which the Biblical spirit of 
his age had but one form of utterance. " Repent or 
ye perish, for the day of the Lord is at hand." He 
was no mere image-breaker, no mere frantic bigot. 
He burnt no Servetus like Calvin ; he burnt only 
a heap of licentious books, dresses, masks, songs, and 
other things associated like these with a debauched 
state of society ; collected by troops of boys from 
the dwellings of a self-reproving city, into the great 
square and disappearing into their elements to the 
sound of Signoria trumpets and Campanile bells, 
while the children, in white robes with olive branches 
and red crosses, marched around the bonfire, singing 



168 



FLORENCE. 



Savonarola's hymns in place of the old bacchanal 
songs usual at the time. At all events it was a 
carnival where, for once, nobody was stoned nor 
maltreated, and where one may pardon much, if to 
nothing else, at least to the popular reaction against 
intemperance, for ages the occasion of half the mis- 
eries and more than half the most barbarous crimes 
of mankind. Sensational, to be sure, and a piece of 
heady revivalism, bound to be short-lived in its 
moral effects. Nor was a republic even then, far less 
is it now, to be converted into a close corporation 
of confessors, a so-called kingdom of Christ, by any 
theological tinkering of constitution and laws. But 
of the bonfire in Florence streets, this at least is true, 
that no work of genuine art perished in it, no book, 
painting, or statue that deserved to live. The proph- 
et, whom Buonarotti and Bartolommeo loved and 
by whom Angelico was almost adored, could not 
have failed in the finer aesthetic sense. The monk 
who induced his fraternity to purchase with their 
own earnings the magnificent library of the- exiled 
Medici and place it in the convent collection which 
was already open to the public, might be permitted 
without special blame to destroy a few copies of Boc- 
caccio's Decamerone and other like slime of genius. 
He stands on the border line between the Middle 
Ages and our modern time ; a Catholic who de- 
nounced the temporal power of the papacy as the 
ruin of its spiritual ; a thinker who dared to affirm 
that reason must not be sacrificed to faith. His 
crime was nevertheless, not heterodoxy, so much as, 
first, love of Florentine freedom, and, next, defiance 
of a Borgian pope ; yet he aimed at no less than the 
radical moral purification of the Christian Church. 



FLORENCE. 



169 



" I stand here because the Lord hath sent me, and I 
wait his word. Then will I raise a voice that shall 
be heard throughout Christendom, and make the 
body of the Church tremble." 

At the end of a long, bare corridor in the convent 
of San Marco, set with little dormitory doors, are two 
small vaulted rooms, eight feet by twelve in size, ap- 
proached through a larger apartment, now used for a 
chapel. Each has a tiny round-arched window set 
deep in the stone. They are empty and dreary, and 
nothing tells their history, but the Latin inscription, 
to this effect : " In these cells dwelt the venerable 
Father Jerome Savonarola, an apostolic man." Such 
the confession of the Church which excommunicated 
and burned him. 

The Signoria of Florence, fearing lest his ashes 
might work miracles dangerous to his enemies, cast 
them into the Arno. Pico, the Platonic philosopher, 
fished up what he imagined a piece of his heart and 
kept it to cure diseases and exorcise demons. The 
papal commissioners pronounced him neither monk 
nor man, but a monster compounded of every crime. 
From every side his murderers received the congratu- 
lations of the Church. But the superstitious terror, 
idolatry, and hate alike have passed. And the rec- 
ord of a nineteenth century historian is this : " Two 
Italians initiated the modern age. Columbus opened 
the path of the sea, Savonarola that of the soul. 
Each touched with his hand a new world whose im- 
mensity he could not comprehend. The one was re- 
warded with chains, the other with fire. Savonarola 
sought to* reconcile reason and faith, religion and 
liberty. With the Council of Constance, Dante, and 
Arnold of Brescia, he opened that work of reforma- 



170 



FLORENCE. 



tion which has been the eternal aspiration of all 
great Italians." 

With this sacrifice of her last saint, the liberty of 
Florence perished, and with liberty, art. While 
Michael Angelo and Raphael lived, sculpture and 
painting indeed survived ; but they had no suc- 
cessors. The reverent simplicity and tender grace 
passed out of her architecture and her life at one and 
the same moment. Nothing else in Florentine archi- 
tecture is so satisfactory as that thirteenth and four- 
teenth century work. I rejoice to see that it is com- 
ing back into view in America, in Boston, where are 
specimens of it or parts of it. 

With the middle of the sixteenth century the po- . 
litical corruption and social demoralization which be- 
gan with 'Savonarola's fall, had fully set in. Charles 
of Germany and Clement of Rome laid hands on the 
doomed city, and gave her over to the returning 
Medici ; and Michael Angelo, stern and sad, after 
vain efforts to save her, refusing to build a fortress 
intended to overawe her, put his sorrow into the 
Night and Day and that woe-worn face under the 
awful helmet. 

After this is no more great art. The Renaissance, 
so called, has set in with its idle frippery, its vain- 
glorious upholstery in stone, its death-cold horizon- 
tality, its meretricious display. Everything the last 
three centuries have done, in Italian architecture, is 
the offensive debris of an era of political degradation. 
But the two have ended together, and the earliest 
years of Italian liberty are signalized by a revival of 
the taste and genius of the elder day. Let us pass 
over this chasm of three centuries and greet the long- 
deferred morning of a better age. 



FLORENCE. 



171 



Sunday, the sixteenth of March, 1861, was a day 
on which it was well for an American to be in Flor- 
ence. On that day, — for Catholicism is not Puri- 
tan and does not keep a Lord's day separate from 
days of secular freedom and patriotic joy, — the jubi- 
lant city celebrated the proclamation of Victor Em- 
manuel as constitutional king of Italy by the United 
Parliament of Turin, by a military review, by a corso 
and the indispensable salvo of cannon and bells. 
The whole city was hung with clusters of glass globes 
flashing in the sun. Their lines ran along arch and 
parapet and corbelled eaves ; up tower and spire, and 
round antique columns, swept the tide of crystal gar- 
lands, among tricolors, green, white, and red, which 
floated from every window, and canopied every way. 
Florence was a city of bubbles and an Aladdin's palace 
of dreams. Alas ! how symbolic of Italian aspiration 
for three hundred years was the vanishing glory ! 

Oriental feasts of lanterns and childish pipe-bub- 
bles, shall this also be mere yeast and spume ? No, 
the glorious moment gave it a meaning beyond the 
fact. Twenty years before, a mild despotism was 
corroding Italy, the murderous policy of Austrian 
Metternich : " My master desires to abolish all idea 
of Italian unity, to reduce Italy to a geographical 
expression." It was my fortune to have seen her 
apparently hopeless degradation in 1844-1845, and 
now to be able to compare with that the high promise 
of this real resurrection. The terrible experience of 
1849 had not been in vain ; the premature revolt, 
stifled by local jealousies, city rivalries, treachery of 
Rome and Naples ; the spectacle of Piedmont hurried 
into unequal war by reckless promises and then aban- 
doned ; her chivalrous king, victim of heartless polit- 



172 



FLORENCE. 



ical cabal, spurring against the foe along the lost 
field of Novara, groaning, " Is there no cannon-ball 
for me ? " and dying discouraged and broken-hearted. 
Not in vain, the spectacle of the little subalpine state 
reared to political and religious liberty, and to Eu- 
ropean position, by the democratic spirit of Victor 
Emmanuel, the refining virtue of D'Azeglio, and the 
diplomacy of Cavour. A race impassioned rather 
than intellectual, dazzled by the exclusively local tra- 
ditions of more than a score of historic cities, the Ital- 
ians had to learn the indispensableness of unity, and 
in twenty years had passed from political childhood 
to manhood calm, serious, aware of the conditions of 
liberty and the price it demands. Coming respon- 
sibilities had changed the countenance of the light- 
hearted race, and sent away its childish dreams like 
the coarse torch-games and monstrous masks of the 
old carnival nights. But the manly compensations 
have come. A free and cheap press has made Italy 
one living body sensitive in every fibre to the suffer- 
ings and desires of every other. Looking at the 
crowds that gathered about the windows where the 
daily papers are put up, you would have thought 
yourself in America, for the frank generosity and 
zeal with which the whole day's issue of news was 
exposed to public view. 

Garibaldi, Mazzini, Cavour, — how diverse the 
policies, how bitter the personal outbreaks of polit- 
ical passion ! I thought they would burst that first 
National Parliament at Turin as a volcano bursts the 
mountain it has upheaved in an hour. But both 
the red-shirted warrior and the wary diplomat knew 
that Italy was more than policies or leaders, and at 
the word of Victor Emmanuel joined their hands, in 



FLORENCE. 



173 



at least seeming harmony. Even Mazzini, the un- 
compromising republican, postponed his protests to 
accept the national will, and patiently awaited his 
time. 

A vast multitude gathered in the Duomo, as when 
the Puritan Savonarola thundered there of coming 
judgment. What an hour to reverse that sentence 
in the name of religion and indorse the new hope ! 
Had the archbishop under the gorgeous canopy come 
to bless the people's right ? Ah, no, it was to honor 
the declaimer from Milan, who was to give voice to 
the dislike of the ecclesiastical powers to the innova- 
tion of free speech and free government. Not one 
word of sympathy with the enthusiasm which had 
robed the city in glory ! Instead of that, denuncia- 
tion of every liberal element in European theology 
or politics, the old death's-head of stagnation and 
decay. 

But, whatever be true of ecclesiasticism elsewhere, 
in Italy it must subserve liberty. Italy still loves 
the Catholic dogma, rite, historic associations ; loves 
their appeal to the affections, the spiritual needs, 
their affirmation of universal brotherhood ; but not 
the ecclesiastical discipline, or the temporal sover- 
eignty. On the other hand, Protestantism can make 
little progress there, even under best advantages, 
even in Piedmont, the plain that stretches out be- 
neath the mountain eyrie of the Vaudois. The in- 
tuitive genius of the race overleaps the half-way logic 
of the sects, and passes over to rationalism when it 
escapes the old traditions. It is not the papacy that 
can hold it back; and the people have discovered 
very rapidly that they can worship without an Italian 
bishop as well as be ruled without a foreign king. 



174 



FLORENCE. 



What holds them to Catholicism is the best thing in 
Catholicism, — the mother-heart of Mary. It has lived 
the longest, and will be the point of transition to a 
religion of larger liberty and light. The Catholic 
Church has no dispensation from the universal law of 
change. Faith in the nation had come to recast the 
Church. Many had been crowned kings of Italy be- 
fore ; but there was never an Italy to answer to the 
crown. That day it meant the united will of twenty- 
two millions, consecrated by the magnanimous sur- 
render of splendid municipal traditions to a common 
stock, sealed by the solemn act of a deliberative Par- 
liament, represented by a king who had risked his 
crown and life for the sake of the nation. That 
evening Florence illuminated her froth of bubbles 
from a sea of central fire. So, along the line of way, 
bridge, arch, parapet, and pier, ran the shining host 
reflected in quivering shafts in the river, every 
spear there pointing to its star above. The graceful 
sweep of the Lungo l'Arno was a double line as of 
twining palm-trees, and flaming cressets beset the 
roof of the corridor that reaches from the gallery of 
art to the palace of law. A mysterious moving in- 
ward light, as the hidden flames swayed in the wind, 
gave the stately bell-tower of Giotto, standing up 
strong and beautiful, with the deep-toned bell rever- 
berating within it, the semblance of a living soul, 
while the mass surging below were like shadows cast 
from its substance. The flaring cressets of the great 
dome seemed bursting from within, not resting on 
the surface, and gave a like vitality to the whole 
majestic pile. A world of hidden fire was struggling 
into freedom, and every neighboring tower and spire 
shot to heaven its answering tongue of flame. Every 



FLORENCE. 



175 



window, arch, and cornice of the Pitti Palace was 
outlined in points of light, while the huge stonewalls 
were invisible, so that in the starless night it stood 
out in black space a palace sketched in stars. Was 
all this splendor of symbolism a childish dream ? In 
the compact mass that swayed along the great thor- 
oughfares, there was no disorder, no ill-humor, no 
violation of good breeding, — a fact I noted in all 
great public gatherings in Northern Italy, political or 
religious, without exception. 

Down the main historic street came Young Italy, 
with torches and banners, singing Garibaldian songs, 
cheering Rome and Venice, whose incorporation with 
the new kingdom was the only step lacking to Italian 
unity, and whose bitter captivity and appeal for de- 
liverance were the theme of press and pictured wall 
throughout the land. In Florence, the restraining 
force at that time required for national preservation, 
which Cavour exerted at Turin, was wielded by 
Bettino Ricasoli. His imperturbable will had the 
respect of all parties, and Young Italy in Florence, at 
least, did not overstep the limits of order. 

During the ten years which followed the Austrian 
restoration, the guard disarmed, the Constitution 
overridden by military tribunals, the press sup- 
pressed, freedom of religion prohibited, capital pun- 
ishment revived, citizens flogged, the people fired on 
while hanging garlands on the tablets of their mar- 
tyrs to liberty, — Ricasoli's wisdom safely directed 
the gathering storm. And so when the hour came, the 
citizens rose with dignity on their oppressors, and 
without shedding a drop of blood, or transgressing 
civil order, turned the cannon which their ruler had 
pointed at his people and dismissed him under escort, 



176 



FLORENCE. 



to disappear forever behind the sunny hills of Tus- 
cany into the black Austrian north from whence he 
came. 

What elasticity and perseverance in this national 
resurrection, spite of its inevitable blunders ! It was 
strange to hear Young Italy applauding the united 
portraits of Victor Emmanuel and Louis Napoleon, 
the interwoven flags of Italy and France. Thrice 
already had she been betrayed by the crowned de- 
ceiver at Paris, — at Rome, at Villafranca, at Nice. 
Yet they hoped against evidence that a "despot 
might will to set men free." Was the trust of a 
brave people ever more cruelly met? Year after 
year this modern Prometheus waited, bound to the 
rock, an impassioned heart doomed to count the 
weary ebbing of opportunity and to turn its zeal and 
devotion into the agony of hope deferred ; while that 
outrageous intrusion of a French army forbade the 
inauguration of the king in his national capital, till 
the unceasing exhortation and warnings of Mazzini 
and Garibaldi were justified in the rude breaking up 
of all cherished dreams of French sympathy. And 
then it was plain to see that the long thwarted nation 
had not bated one jot of hope. From discourage- 
ments even sadder than his wounds, Garibaldi could 
greet with kindly eyes the emancipation of the Amer- 
ican slave. 

The great diplomatist in whom all hopes had cen- 
tred was suddenly withdrawn ; and, as it always is 
when a great leader dies in the crisis of the fight for 
freedom and nationality, all seemed lost with Cavour. 
But lo, then the grandest and most needed lesson, — 
that the cause did not stand by personal strength or 
skill so much as by the gravitations of human nature 



FLOEENCE. 



177 



and its unerring laws, the true and only saviors of 
the world. Here again, as in so many past emergen- 
cies, Florence contributed the man for the hour, — 
austere, self-involved, gloved, and buttoned to the 
chin, a patriot if an aristocrat, with look at once to 
the future and the past, Teutonic nerve and Italian 
heart. Still, bitter drawbacks follow on the days of 
enthusiasm I have tried to describe. The people, 
cheated again of the unity that seemed within their 
grasp by the wretched policies of France and Prus- 
sia, turned in on themselves for a season almost in 
reaction. For years Italy was rent by satellites of 
Napoleon and Jesuits in disguise, resolved on fore- 
closing the possibility of acquiring Venice and Rome. 

Even Ricasoli dissolved a parliament because it 
refused to restore sequestrated church property to its 
old possessors for a price. The youth who rose at 
Garibaldi's summons in 1867 with the cry of " Rome, 
or Death," were mowed down by French chassepots 
at Monte Rotondo, and the civilized world looked on 
while France tested her new guns on heroic boys, 
and the army of Victor Emmanuel stood by with 
folded arms, because a shameful " September Conven- 
tion " had been extorted from Italy in repayment to 
France for her half-way help in 1861. No possibility 
of organization remained, nor of a respected govern- 
ment, and so the land went over to anarch} 7 , swarm- 
ing with bandits defying law. It was not for the 
interest of her powerful neighbors that Italy should 
be a European power ; they would fret and tantalize 
their victim till her heart should go down in despair. 
Even a parliament of long-tried patriots seemed dis- 
posed to yield to the spell of these demoralizing 
forces, and the king himself was not beyond suspi- 

12 



1T8 



FLORENCE. 



cion of playing into their hands. But Italy was not 
to die. Her John Brown was not wanting. Gari- 
baldi's raid on Naples joined the south to the north, 
and gave Victor Emmanuel the chance to drop that 
enforced submission which had made him imprison 
his noblest subject. A new thrill went irresistibly 
through the nation ; leagues were formed to buy no 
French goods and have no dealings with Frenchmen. 

The lesson of civil and religious liberty was learned 
which Bruno, and Mario, and Bernardino Ochino, 
and Arnold of Brescia, and Savonarola, and a long 
line of great Italians had sealed with their blood, in 
prison, or exile, or noble warfare. Then came the 
guerdon of nature to their constancy and cheer. To 
the true, even nations come round. Prussia, once the 
evil genius of Italy, became perforce her liberator, 
In 1866 Koniggratz gave Venetia; in 1870 Sedan 
gave Rome. At last, politically as well as in enthusi- 
asm of prophecy, "Italia e." The religious question 
hastens to a crisis that can have but one settlement. 
Reconciliation with the secular arm is already recom- 
mended by distinguished Catholics as the policy of 
the future. Elementary education has been declared 
not only gratuitous and obligatory, as it had already 
been since 1859, but secular also. Religious instruc- 
tion is remanded to the care of the family, which is 
now free from the enforced intrusion of a priesthood. 

Nor can it be regarded, in the present condition 
of the popular mind, as other than a good sign, that 
Italy, already provided with thirteen academies of 
the fine arts and all the splendid intellectual tradi- 
tions of her cities, shows just now a diminution in 
the number of pupils attending the higher schools 
and an increase in those of the lower. Not that the 



FLORENCE. 



179 



former class of schools is neglected : Milan academy, 
for example, has fourteen hundred students. The 
gifted race has not forgotten to dream of great things, 
and its great dreams are now of usef ul things, becom- 
ing the dawn of national unity. Plans for popular 
education, industrial organization, revival of science 
and literature, renovating worn-out lands, redeeming 
unhealthy marshes, clearing the Tiber from the slime 
of ages, opening Rome to commerce by the old port 
of Ostia and the pier of Hadrian, utilizing the splen- 
did harbors of the peninsula, exhuming buried art, — 
are only limited by the poverty of the just emerging 
state. Political construction suffers as yet from that 
inevitable consequence of a period of degeneracy, the 
lack of wise and cultured leaders. Statesmen are not 
made in an hour, nor without schooling of a great 
public conscience. For three centuries the world has 
gone to her, not to honor the living, but to brood 
over the dead, wondering, — 

" Alas, this Italy has too long swept 
Heroic ashes up for hour-glass sand." 

But she was not dead. In some shadowy fashion 
the continuity of national being and hope was pre- 
served in those thirty sundered cities, each hugging 
its own glorious memories in its sleep. 

Liberty answered the cry of Garibaldi in Rome 
and Naples ; and Venetia welcomed its deliverers ; 
and even the mild despotism of the last Austrian 
archdukes, so long as it was unresisted, had spared 
the old fine manners and tastes of the Tuscans, and 
shown no lack of interest in practical philanthropic 
works. It was domestic life that suffered most in 
the long epoch of foreign sway, when no manly aims 
were allowed to quicken manhood, and no social inde- 



180 



FLORENCE. 



pendence in men or women, to give dignity or self- 
respect to the amenities of home. But the native 
genius is now free to rehabilitate the hearths, so 
long deserted for the theatre, cafe, club-room, in the 
insanity of social and political despair. The bare, 
mouldy, barrack-like stories, the desolate stairways, 
the blind alleys, the dreary stateliness of which only 
stone is capable, will warm into nineteenth century 
homes. The jealous seclusion of maidens, the shal- 
low listlessness of woman in a race which was once 
so prolific of cultured women, in the college of Bo- 
logna and the palaces of Florence, are explicable 
enough by causes now speedily to be removed. Great 
duties and interests will develop a thoughtful middle- 
class, and secure a national system of education in 
place of the old clerical schools. 

Shall there be no resurrection for native art? 
Look into the eyes of the Florentine peasant lads and 
ask if the genius of Giotto, the shepherd boy, is gone 
from his native hills. What a climate is this Italian ; 
by its kindliness so attempered to the human frame, 
that the nerves are saved from all that rasping and 
rending by atmospheric demons, which in less favored 
zones distract and thwart us, and the faculties enjoy 
their free play like children tempted out by the sun- 
shine and breeze, — the very climate to foster genius 
in its highest forms ! And what a race is this Ital- 
ian ; the rich outcome of an infinite intermixture 
from the old days of Roman conquests, pouring to- 
gether the blood of all tribes of the earth, and gath- 
ering up their cultures and their gifts to the later 
attractions of Italy, as the constant magnet of Chris- 
tian nations and the battle-field of European states. 
Shall we wonder at the fact, strangely enough but 



FLORENCE. 



181 



little noticed, that as England has given the great 
practical interests, and Germany the great metaphy- 
sicians, and France the great mathematicians and 
masters in method and expression, so Italy has till 
recently shone beyond other lands in genius for orig- 
inal discovery, and in the intuition which initiates 
fresh spheres of thought, and opens new worlds. 

Relaxed and unstrung as this antique nerve has 
been, its fibre is not spent nor spoiled. Let us doubt 
no more the future of Italy. We should know that 
it takes time to earn a national conscience. But we 
do not know what help to winning thereof there is 
in inheriting through, twenty centuries an historic 
crown ; in the inspiration of thirty ancient seats of 
arts and arms, every city of them a ganglion of his- 
toric fire. Such a product of the genius of humanity 
does not die. It is an immortality of evolution ; its 
changes but the correlation of persistent ideal force. 
The glowing marbles of the dead will no longer make 
more ghostlike the deathly faces of the living. 

From these golden hills of Florence, Galileo and 
Dante will bless the consummation they heralded in 
pain. Saxon and Puritan, England and America, 
will share the benediction, pilgrims to sainted graves. 
For here, beneath the cypresses that look off to the 
purple 'Apennines and their white crowns, rest the 
heart and brain of one who knew not how to be 
weary of serving justice, freedom, and love ; his her- 
oism resting in the bosom of his piety ; his ampler 
humanity sounding rare resources of knowledge and 
faith, and gathering them home to practical use ; his 
function mediative and judicial, to break the living 
bread of natural religion to the people and to burn 
up the chaff of superstition with unquenchable fire 0 



182 



FLORENCE. 



And if his work was initial, not final, and new state- 
ments come with advancing liberties, none the less is 
the memory of Theodore Parker a national inspira- 
tion, as of one who, in those deep spheres where the 
thought and conscience of a people are born and fed, 
destroyed only that he might build, and swept away 
vain traditions that he might found the people's lib- 
erty in the laws of science and the soul. 

Nor will any true American fail for Elizabeth Bar- 
rett Browning's sake to love the city of her adop- 
tion. In the days to come, when England and Amer- 
ica shall be bound more closely than ever by their 
indissoluble ties of nature and culture, it will not be 
forgotten that she who once with heavy heart wrote 
the righteous anathema across the sea, with her last 
breath sent us this blessing : " I feel with more pain 
than most Americans do, the sorrow of your transi- 
tion time ; but I do feel that it is transition ; that it 
is crisis ; that you will come out of the fire purified 
and stainless, having had the angel of a great cause 
walking with you in the furnace." 



THE ALPS OF THE IDEAL AND THE 
SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



We build our cities on the lowlands, where we 
can walk on a common level, and trade along the 
rivers, and across the seas, and work easily as a mass 
for production in quantity. But, when the atom of 
the mass would learn what condensed fire it is, when 
politician, trader, artisan, student has to stand alone, 
and find intrinsic values, then, as the nation in its 
extremity flees to its Rock Rimmon, or its Tyrol, so 
the man to his mountains ; in the body if he can, at 
all events in the spirit. 

For the mountain is nature's symbol of personal- 
ity ; her word of decision, vigor, outlook, serenity, 
self-respect; of humility also and awe, — whatsoever 
reconstructs the disintegrating moral force and re- 
news spiritual substance. 

Our dreams' are haunted by unseen table-lands; 
some vision of " Delectable Mountains " upholds our 
nobler trust. They are history ; " Beautiful is Zion," 
says the Hebrew. Rome also rules from her seven 
hills ; Athens from her Acropolis ; Memphis from 
her Pyramids, — mountains that are the steps of man 
to the vantage of his ideal. His gods sit on Hima- 
laya, Olympus, Ararat, Elburz, nearest the stars. 
Around Meru, the dome of Asia, revolve her deities 



184 



THE ALPS OF THE IDEAL. 



and worlds. On Parnassus, the Muses of Greece 
circle their fair-haired god of light. Mountains are 
prehistoric, and poetry begins the world at them with 
descending tracks of patriarchs and long-lived happy 
men. Zoroaster, Moses, Mahomet, Christ, legislate 
from mountains to the imagination and faith of races, 
who have turned away from all cities of the plain 
to lift their ideals upon these natural thrones, and 
make supernaturalism itself pay tribute to a grander 
truth. And our civilization, which makes highways 
for the people, must not level downwards to the com- 
mon flat of blind competition, jealous of eminence, 
or beastly with the betting-match and the prize-ring. 
Liberty is no dead level, else were Peking, with all 
its houses of one height and all its pagodas of one 
fashion, its supreme type. For the lower personal 
quality must recognize the higher ; nature will bring 
us also to the mountain's foot. And, when our 
American wave shall have swept on to the lifted crest 
of the continent as the older civilizations gathered 
about Ararat and Belur-Tagh, and our scrambling 
conceit is forgotten in the nobler humanity that rail- 
road, and telegraph, and migration, and revolution 
mean, we shall doubtless repeat the old awe; the pa- 
triotic and poetic spells will gather about our own 
Alpine world. 

Now, the power of mountains is not material pow- 
er ; not as mass do they master us. They are but 
ripples, the loftiest of them not a two thousandth 
part of the earth's diameter, mere crumplings of her 
skin. Geology is at its wit's end to know if they are 
not due to mere sinking in of the cooling mass. No 
longer are their roots set in fire ; and we know no 
more of the "central heat " than we do of the theo- 



THE ALPS OF THE IDEAL. 



185 



logical burning lake, or of Dante's circles of the fiery- 
pit. Their volcanic uplifts are but as bubbles on the 
sea. Dhwalagiri or Kilimandjaro, the peaks of the 
Himalaya and Atlas, that rise to the inaccessible 
limit of mountain height, pierce scarce a tenth of the 
thin air envelope of the globe. Mont Blanc is but a 
pebble in this air-ocean. " Stay the Morning-Star in 
his steep course ? " Why, it is but a line across his 
path, and the dawn is swift to drown these bits of 
sand-bar as it rises to flood the continents and seas. 

Not their mass, then, makes mountains significant, 
so much as their affinity with man's ideals, directing 
and shaping them as well as lifting them into imag- 
ination and faith. For his civilizations follow their 
scoops, like the winds of his atmosphere, the tides of 
his shores. Their silent Rhone glacier, spreading out 
its great ice-fingers among the clouds, is first father 
of Geneva, of Lyons, of Marseilles. The deltas of 
Nile and Ganges, Thames, Seine, Mississippi, where 
history centres, where the generations find permanent 
foothold, are but their silted sand. Man stands on 
his mountains to triangulate the globe, to gauge and 
weigh and scale the invisible forces, in which he 
lives. They show him metal and star. A savage, 
he takes the tops of the hills for his signal-fires. A 
master of science, he lays his speaking wires along 
the ocean plateaus. If " mountains interposed have 
made enemies of nations," there is, nevertheless, no 
such provocative as they are to the work that brings 
men together and makes them friends. There is 
nothing more suggestive in the history of Europe 
than the transformation of the petty Swiss Cantons 
from fighting clans into a peaceful and patriotic 
Commonwealth through the impulse of road-building 



188 



THE ALPS OF THE IDEAL. 



and the yearning for society, enforced on a scattered 
peasantry by the mountain barriers that shut them 
in. Well may they love the frowning walls they 
have mastered, and call them by the pet names of 
their domestic and hunting life. These are the 
mediators of Europe, the common sanctuary, true 
field of the u Truce of God," which diplomacy and 
rapine alike must recognize ; and even a rude Louis 
Napoleon dared not violate far or attempt to hold. 
A nation is always more united and more permanent 
for its mountain basis, though it is not apt to reach 
the finer education which this basis yields, unless it 
can escape at will to the open plain, and know the 
highlands by distance and in relief. The higher 
mountains must appeal to the sense of contrast and 
the freedom of contemplation. But when these are 
given, he who can lift his eyes above himself re- 
ceives such interpretation of life and the world as 
can only be likened to new creation of both. Light 
is not light till it shines back from these worn faces, 
ploughed and scarred up to their inviolate summits, 
in hues of immortal youth. Stars are not stars till 
they burn large and lustrous through the blackness of 
the upper air, or islanded in seas of twilight above 
dark ridges where every pine stands waiting to be 
clothed in a new body of light from their inaccessible 
shores. Even clouds are more than clouds when they 
rest on the lower hills and by hiding their summits 
make the least of them a mountain ; and mist is more 
than mist when it sweeps over a world of peaks and 
passes, effaces them in an instant, and leaves you, 
who just stood amidst a living universe, in the blank 
void alone. You know not how the air is courage 
and the fire of will, how toil may cheer, and trouble 



THE ALPS OF THE IDEAL. 



187 



pay as it goes, till nature meets you as you climb, 
with the aspiration of her stone stairways, to the re- 
pose of her ledges and the triumph of her highest out- 
looks. Their gifts are pluck and perseverance, the 
upward look, the better hope, the pick of vantage, 
the quick ear and eye to which all great and little 
things are instant and vital, the soul watching at the 
gates of sense, and specially this prime lesson of per- 
sonality, — that it is what and where we stand that 
shapes our world. How Browning has worded this 
plasticity of mountain shape to our point of view : — 

" Oh, those mountains, their infinite movement ! 
Still moving with you — 
For, ever some new head and breast of them. 
Thrusts into view." 

Whoso has learned by many-sided thought that we 
see but what we are, and make the visions we see, is 
strong. 

It is conventionality, it is impertinence, to " feel 
our insignificance up there," as the phrase is. Rather 
we are self no more, but lose our limits in the whole ; 
older than winds or rocks, we, like the laws and the 
spaces, were always here. As our poet " climbed to 
the top of Calvano," — 

" And God's own profound 
Was above me, and round me the mountains, 

And under, the sea, 
And within me, my heart to bear witness 

What was and shall be." 

The endless fascination of mountains is in this : 
that their meaning is in us; and not in our common 
place, but in those elect hours when the mystery of 
its own origin and path and purpose touches the 
soul. 



188 



THE ALPS OF THE IDEAL. 



" Who knoweth," say these earth-born Titans also, 
44 how our buttressed strength was piled, or how our 
tender outlines were carved ? " The path of the 
wild goat, the eagle's track to her nest, the cradle of 
the torrent, who hath known ; or how came they 
hanging aloft in the sky ? As none beheld that fine 
splinter on the easternmost crag that caught the first 
ray of morning, so who can tell where in the un- 
searchable heights of his nature came down the first 
glow of what is now the daylight of his life ? Or on 
what secluded dream fell the first ray of a great dawn 
in human history or faith ? How were those fathom- 
less chasms scooped that part the cliffs forever above 
the glacial sea, rivaling the mystery of those spiritual 
gulfs that divide good from evil, right from wrong ? 
What is the mountain, what the conscious soul ? 
We walk and work under the unanswered problems 
of both, where it is the very void of silence that 
makes us full. Can any rational man imagine that 
science explains the one more than the other ? How 
were slowly settling layers of living organisms and 
dead atoms compressed and transformed to make the 
solid strength that towers above us, we may learn, 
when we know how the thoughts have fared that fell 
one by one into the deeps of experience. For is not 
memory also metamorphic, since not one mood of the 
past can ever be recalled, unchanged ? Science dis- 
pels the pretty dreams of mythology, but analysis 
never solved the metallurgy that sets life to burn- 
ing and flashing in the amethyst and diamond of the 
mine, any more than it has solved the feeling that 
rises unbidden in the heart. Who shall track the 
mountain experience, the dislocation of masses, the 
idiosyncrasies of shape, hard to explain as one's own 



THE ALPS OF THE IDEAL. 



189 



disjointed fancies and dreams? Picking his way 
among them one cannot predict where his next step 
shall be ; every fresh foothold gained is a special 
wonder ; many a leap a pure act of faith ; many a 
dizzy path where only one can go at a time, like 
the Moslem's Bridge of Judgment, sharp as a razor's 
edge 0 Steep bare fronts, whereon should be written 
the hieroglyphics of the mountain history, will often 
seem blank as the great Egyptian tablet of your 
memory, into which your whole life has entered. Yet 
it is all there, only the lines, like those of tempera- 
ment, tradition, fate, and will, are too minute ; the 
crisp curls of dry lichen that will not be detached ; 
the frost seams wrought by microscopic levers, all 
heaving together, foreordained to split the mass; the 
mystic lines of cleavage, diluvial grooves, ghostly rec- 
ords of a world of rushing currents, eager straining 
ambitions forever past ; weather-stains, rain-channels, 
polished water spaces, the fixed ideas and routines of 
the mountain mind. The Switzerland of nature is 
the mystery of man. The statistics of time reach the 
root of neither. Yet both, serene in their laws beyond 
the avalanche and the storm, in a patience " without 
haste, but without rest," in a progress which is ever 
old and ever new, beyond man's understanding as 
they are, will never prove beyond his love and trust. 

You have spoken the secret of this human attrac- 
tion to mountains, when you say that they are the 
great physical types of personalities of the globe. 
There they stand, clear-cut, strong, self-poised, self- 
possessed, radical, upright ; backbone, rib, and muscle 
not to be bent ; not reflecting sky, bird, cloud, like 
the passive lake, but transmuting whatsoever touches 
them into radiations of their own original life : cloud 



190 



THE ALPS OF THE IDEAL. 



compelling, storm-ruling Joves. Each is himself and 
none other, and faces the elements by his own proper 
force. I once saw from the terrace of Bern the long 
line of Oberland kings, — Jungfrau, Eiger, Monch, 
and Wellhorn, and Wetterhorn, and Finsteraarhorn, 
— on their great white thrones along the horizon ; each 
refusing preeminence, yet maintaining his individual 
form and tone. A new Olympus seemed to reaffirm 
the old truth, that the gods are divine men. So far 
they seemed and yet so near, I thought of Sterling's 
verse, — 

" Ever their phantoms arise before us, 

Our loftier brothers, but one in blood ; 
By bed and table they lord it o'er us, 
> With looks of beauty and words of good." 

Cotopaxi or Dhwalagiri is a personality that sums 
up the world ; all zones from equator to poles, all 
products in orderly ascent on its sides ; all primal 
elements and powers fused in its grandeur and its 
peace. 

Nor do the higher mountains lack suggestion of 
the very finest types of personal greatness. For, 
while the lower platforms and slopes of these clothe 
themselves in manifold products of native culture 
and growth, and then higher ones, in the strength of 
pine, and hardy grace of spruce, and still higher up, 
harvests of wild berries and pretty grasses greet the 
guest that climbs so far, and even then come pas- 
tures where the herds can glean sweet food, as if 
the mountains could not bear to cease from open 
bounty and use, — above all these levels are spaces 
where they seem to trust in no fruits or uses of their 
own, but just in lying open to the infinite and being 
clothed only in its light ; as if to be was of itself to 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 191 



have sight and strength and eminent domain. And 
the further up they are, the more they seem to hide 
their comparative elevation, as Mont Blanc's de- 
pressed dome looks less conspicuous from below than 
the needle peaks encircling and bending towards it. 
Coleridge called architecture "frozen music." Surely 
the mountain is the soul in hieroglyph ; and Tenny- 
son has interpreted the symbol : — 

" The path of duty is the way to glory : 
He, that ever following her commands, 
On with toil of heart and knees and hands 

Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won 
His path upward, and prevail'd, 
Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled, 
Are close upon the shining table-lands, 

To which our God Himself is moon and sun." 

The mountain is type of the soul, but not of the 
God of the soul. Personality is not infinite but 
finite ; I cannot give even that greatest of concrete 
names to the eternal substance of the universe, the 
inscrutable meaning of all laws and forces, the life 
that contains all and is all, immanent and whole, 
while personalities come and go. And so the lof- 
tiest summit above the sea level penetrates but a 
little way into space, and parts its unity only to lose 
itself in its bosom, and repose in its necessities of 
order and peace. 

And now we will pass from these Alps of the Ideal 
to the Switzerland of the Swiss. It may seem to be 
a far descent. But the eternal realities do not stand 
in symbol around a people for ages and leave no 
vestige in their consciousness. And first, Switzer- 
land is a living monument of the superiority of moral 
over material forces, of the conversion of hindrances 



192 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



into helps. Everything is symbolic of this mastery 
of eentrif ugal forces by constructive and unifying law. 
I cannot this evening speak of the wonderful illustra- 
tions of my statement in the history of Swiss liberty, 
political and religious. I wish to confine myself to 
the direct relations of this people to the presence of 
their Alpine world. 

They number twenty-two small cantons, separated 
by mountains that pierce the clouds, sinking into 
valleys of corresponding depth, some of which behold 
but a strip of the starry sky. They have made these 
barriers yield them the noblest highways in the 
world, types of some grand idea found in all races 
and religions, binding the ages, and testifying of an 
irresistible brotherhood. 

From the savage desolation of the glaciers to the 
green and wealthy plains, from the homes of the keen- 
eyed mountain guides to the land and lake of Tell, 
sweeps down in stately solidity and grace the mag- 
nificent St. Grothard road. Down the solemn gorge 
it sweeps, at intervals bridging the inevitable torrent 
that attends it like a fate, as if it laid a human hand 
on the rage and roar of a Caliban, infuriate at the 
bold intrusion of man ; between bare precipices, 
splintered, shelled, shattered, carved, every square 
yard an infinite intricacy of rock structure and a 
study in the mysteries of color and form. And 
where these walls break away, the eye is led off up 
amphitheatres of mountains, seas of pine and gla- 
cier ; and where they gather over your head, yet far 
in the distance behind or before, shapely domes and 
peaks ascend, blue beyond blue, in infinitely delicate 
gradation, till they pass into transparent sky. The 
looped curves of the descent have an astronomical 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 193 

perfection. This more than Roman structure is the 
tribute of two poor Catholic cantons to the spirit of 
strength, beauty, and use ; and their bus}' hammers 
keep it in repair. Thus have the Swiss everywhere 
treated the prodigious obstacles to communication, 
in a land which resembles a petrified sea of storm- 
tost waves. Its earliest tribes were isolated clans, the 
wind-borne waifs of many races. The awful preci- 
pice, the mysterious glacier, the whelming avalanche, 
the lonely barren pass, the treacherous ice-slope, the 
Fohn-wind from Africa melting accumulated snows 
in a night to engulf hut and hamlet, combined all 
the destructive forces of nature to quell the souls of 
these rude men. Here were gathered, as time went 
on, as many nationalities as make up our American 
race, yet with no absorbing quality in either, anal- 
ogous to the Anglo-Saxon with us, to overcome the 
isolations of nature. In the Grisons are no less than 
thirty distinct valleys, parted by enormous ridges, in 
four of which Italian is spoken, in ten, German, in 
the rest Romanic, a mixed speech with half a dozen 
dialects. I observed in the valley of Chamounix 
alone, the Celtic, Italian, and Teutonic varieties of 
face ; and in general, the prevalence of two distinct 
physiological types, determined, as I believe, by the 
differing capacity of races for meeting the severi- 
ties of the Alpine climate. One of these has a rud- 
dy, lively countenance, a clear and quiet expression, 
deepening into thoughtfulness with age ; the other 
a stunted form, loose-jointed and weak-limbed, a low 
forehead, broad flat features, and an expression tend- 
ing towards, and not unfrequently reaching, fatuity, 
and this not in the districts alone where cretinism 
prevails. The people of the upper regions are, of 

13 



194 THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



course, greatly overworked. Probably the mere climb- 
ing tells heavily on the nervous energy. They look 
Liliputian, as if snubbed by the mountains, which 
have bred dwarfs for the sake of contrast, and 

" Taunted the lofty land 
With little men." 

These toilers of the heights get lean and angular, 
and the women grow old prematurely ; anxiety 
wrinkles the face of youth, and while the head 
lengthens out, the body fails of due expansion. It 
is a question of heel- work. I suspect that too steep 
mountains, and too easy levels (Switzerland and 
Holland) breed short statures; while hill ranges 
kindly pull at bone and fibre and lengthen the limbs. 
In the lowlands of Switzerland the depressing influ- 
ences give way, and thence come further contrasts as 
obstacles in the way of national fusion. Consider 
what large numbers of the Swiss live in hamlets or 
secluded cots, absolutely cut off from society during 
most of the year. No access to mankind but by some 
dizzy path skirting precipices and winding down 
their sides, over debris and torrent for miles and 
miles. Above the Mer de Glace, solitary keepers 
watch their herds all summer long, without seeing a 
human face. It is said they knit for pastime. But 
what garments do the impersonal hours, the storms, 
and torrents, and grazing herds knit around them. 
What does Nature make of these molecules of con- 
sciousness, to whom she vouchsafes only mountain 
masses of utter loneliness, and supreme power ? 
Eyes are but lenses, not sight ; and these eyes, we 
must think, are so opaque as to kindly temper the 
infinite splendors and terrors to simple souls. From 
lower heights you may discern here and there a peas- 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



195 



ant moving about his homestead pasture in the sky ; 
a butterfly could scale the snow-cliffs above him bet- 
ter than he, and seems quite as significant a creature 
as he, beside them. Yet there he lives, year in and 
out, and guards his household treasures, and rears 
them in the pride of old traditions to know them- 
selves free Switzers and trust Nature as their next 
friend ; as, 

" Down Alpine heights the silvery streamlets flow ; 
And the bold chamois go ; 
On giddy crags they stand, 
And drink from God's own hand." 

As for you, there was need of that human insect 
moving in your far prospect, to make the solitude 
itself palpable. How many times the mere tinkle of 
a herd-bell, a shepherd's voice on the height, or a 
hunter's gun-crack in the pine-seas below, has broken 
the terrible dream-like spell of mountain universe 
and made it an instant reality ! I suppose that the 
lonely speck of a herdsman up there is not left to 
be visited only, like Mont Blanc, " by hosts of stars," 
but has his world - reviving vision of other human 
specks over the vast expanses he knows and tracks 
with his eye so well ; and the good they do his heart 
and hope may put to shame our use of telegraph 
and steam-power. 

One sees how familiarity must help the isolated 
Switzers to disregard and so conquer the antagonisms 
around them, just as the roar of a thousand torrents, 
blent into one deep under-roll, an audible eternity, 
becomes so intimate to the hearing in the Alps, that 
you never think of its mystery, nor ask its explana- 
tion. And one might almost say that it is only when 
herd-bell, or horn, or bleat of sheep floods this low 



196 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



perpetual voice of nature with a human gladness and 
peace that you are aroused to take note of its all-per- 
vading presence. So the peasant, keeping his goat 
track over the high Alps, does not hold his breath 
when the avalanches thunder down beside him, nor 
shrink from dizziest cliffs when need is to cross them, 
and this just because they front and frown on him 
every day he has lived. 

But the brief summer smiles on him all the more 
sweetly for the shortness of her stay, and the length- 
ened winter brings at last all the swifter and hap- 
pier surprise. These green alps (for the alp is the 
high meadow, not the mountain face), under bare 
crag and snow-field, are radiant in a twinkling with 
pansies, gentians, purple heather, potentillas, blue- 
bells, buttercups, daisies, thyme, and the blushing 
rhododendron, or Alpine rose, whose color is distilled 
from the sunset on ruddy peaks and domes of snow. 
Even the rock-debris flowers out, and the thin-clad 
knoll ; and every flower nestles close to the ground, 
with scarce a leaf or stem. For the suddenness and 
swiftness of the season and the solar reflections drive 
the plant straight to its bloom, and all its life goes 
to color and size of flower. The dandelion turns to 
glowing orange, the clover to deep crimson, the gen- 
tian takes intenser blue ; only harebell and pansy are 
pale, like the crystalline of the snows. And up, up 
over these flowery alps, by paths that skirt the eter- 
nal toil of the elements to build and to destroy, over 
the sea of mountains rent and ploughed, upheaved as 
in ecstasy out of hopeless depression in the gloom, over 
great brown ridges of the dust of ten thousand years, 
beneath mysterious reaches of an unexplored world 
of light — up the worn and winding tracks of daily 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



197 



need, go simple folk, driving their white trains to 
high pastures, safe and sure as the wild geese fly 
northward to meet the spring ; and their cheery 
" Ranz des Vaches " echoes back from the stately 
brotherhood of watching peaks, — watching day and 
night ; now hid, now revealed ; now far off in the 
clearness, now close in the world-shadow ; now in col- 
orless, inaccessible reserve, now in the inexpressible 
tenderness of that glow which only Alpine snows can 
take from parting day. Does it not sound strange to 
yourself when you say that the yodling boy or girl 
up there sees nothing of all this open book of the 
mystery of life? Can you think it? Life is his 
also, and death will be his. If he sees not all this 
that you see, at least he is in and of it ; it has the 
making of him. From the hills also cometh his help. 

In these remote hamlets life is under primitive con- 
ditions with little visible resource; it hangs with 
cramp-iron from the cliffs with one hand, while ply- 
ing the sickle on scanty blades with the other ; it 
bends like the pack-horse under constant burdens, as 
the weary head and feet of man or woman climb the 
unchanging ways ; taking its religious tone doubtless 
more from the rigors and perils of the surrounding 
than from its beauty or sublimity ; and so writing 
out, as men do, on many a stretch of desolation the 
old story of human wickedness and fall. 

From the hamlet of Miirren, five thousand feet 
above the sea, one looks across the deep gorge of 
Lauterbriinnen up the Roththal snows into loftiest 
ridges of the Jungfrau. This arctic world, which the 
chamois scarce explores, was once, so runs the legend, 
a green and smiling alp, and then blasted forever for 
the sin of its possessors. Rocks projecting from the 



198 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



snow, in shape of uncouth beasts and men, are spell- 
bound criminals, or demons shut for a season in stone. 
As the Hebrews heard the whispers of devils in the 
desert, so many a Swiss peasant takes the mysterious 
voices of the mountain for the moans of tormented 
souls. These legends haunt many other icy recesses 
of the mountains also. Such pranks all vast solitudes 
will play with the human conscience and give tradi- 
tions of a Fall and a Judgment. But the legend of 
paradisaic verdure having preceded a penal desolation 
on the Alps has doubtless other causes. Nothing is 
more natural than that the utter absence of verdure 
in vast mountain tracts should suggest its very oppo- 
site by the law of contrasts. It is probably con- 
nected, also, with actual physical changes. The 
secular advance and recession of the glaciers imply 
great climatic changes in these regions. The fertile 
valley before us was really once a polar wilderness, 
and the lofty slope now bristling with pinnacles of 
ice and yawning with crevasses was once covered 
with pines or flowering sward. Un wasted as the gla- 
cier seems, it is alive with inner movements ; and far 
within its hollow sound of issuing or falling waters, 
and the strange gurgle and splash of rock and ice, the 
primal reservoirs are forever filling drop by drop. As 
you look up from the foot of a glacier, its immense 
forehead or snout seems plunging through a rocky 
mass, tearing and heaving it upon either side, though 
this is not the fact. It seems alive or driven on by 
some living force, resembling a sea-monster's head, a 
mighty wedge, an upturned ship's prow. Its highest 
layers split away, opening a vaulted cavern, whence 
rushes the newborn Arve, or Rhone, or Reuss. An 
azure gleam plays in the crevasses ; little rills course 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



199 



down the sides scooping their way. Far above you 
hangs the threatening ice- wall waiting to burst 
and fall, and so recover lost ground for the once 
magnificent torrent, now receding for centuries. 
Little time would be needed to convert the valley 
into a polar sea, but for the swift melting and evapo- 
ration that is going on. Mont Blanc would rise four 
hundred feet in a century, by the mere heaping of 
the annual snows, but for these tremendous arteries 
of pounded and packed, but fluent, ice. Add to all 
these signs of living power the scarce perceptible 
creep and lapse of the ice river, noted but at inter- 
vals, like the ebb and flow of human times, the boom 
and crash of falling rocks upon the surface, the slow- 
rising moraine-heap at its side, the dust of crumbled 
mountains pushed before it to the plain, the eter- 
nal resources from which it is fed, — and you will 
see how much there is in a glacier to impress the 
lonely generations with a sense of continuous forces 
at never-failing and resistless endeavor, and how this 
sense would be reflected in their traditional instincts 
and habits, the real basis of a people's character. 

They know that the ice-stream is the architect of 
their whole mountain world, the scooper of the gulfs, 
the builder of the barriers ; and though it presses too 
close and familiar to leave the imagination free, its 
ceaseless presence is surely the father of much of that 
patient, persistent striving which has enabled the 
social instincts of the Swiss to become conquerors of 
gulf and barrier alike. It helps this victory of theirs 
even more directly, fertilizing the valleys and reliev- 
ing the accumulated snow mass on the heights. The 
glaciers are highways of geographical connection for 
the elements, though not for man, and by their vast 



200 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



related systems suggest unity on the grandest scale. 
Three feeders flow together from different sides into 
the central stream of the Mer de Glace. From that 
scarcely accessible plateau of the Bernese Oberland, 
upholding all its mighty peaks and facing the four 
quarters of the heavens, descend nine great glaciers, 
by whatever paths they can find a passage, to the 
deep valleys of Grindelwald, Rosenlaui, Hasli, and 
the Rhone, — furcating from the one vast chamber 
above the clouds, where their lines of separation 
cease. It is a majestic symbol of unity lifted in the 
heart of Switzerland, though its altar-rim overflows 
not with fire, but in streams of ice that melt into 
beauty where they fall. And now comes science, 
to trace the ancient lines of glacial motion east and 
west, from mountain range to range, and make the 
boulders on the flanks of Jura report their far-off 
homes in the central Alps. What thrills of sympa- 
thetic feeling must have flashed through all the can- 
tons when it was made known that the prediction 
based upon calculations of the rate of glacial motion, 
— that after a stated number of years, the remains of 
a party who had been lost in the upper crevasses of 
the Mer de Glace would be found at its foot, — had 
proved true ! Or when Saussure and Forbes and 
Rendu and Agassiz and Tyndall, one after another, 
revealed the beautiful laws that drew the regular 
curves of movement across the wildest wrinkles of 
the glacier's face, and pulled the plunging crevasses 
into orderly lines ; and arranged the bounds of drift 
like the leaves of a scroll, and spread out the petals 
of that great rose of ice at the cradle of the Rhone ; 
and tumbled the neve, new-frozen from a hundred 
heights, over ridges of rock in broken fragments, to 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



201 



be shaped by the sun into pinnacles and towers and 
blades of light ; and made the melting surface a 
honeycomb of pretty cells, and gave a tender blue 
to the cold caves within the mass, and the hues of 
Tynan purple to the clouds above it, as one may see 
of a summer day, if he lies upon the ground and 
looks at them across the tremulous exhalations of its 
upturned sea ! What endless mission it has ! As 
the myth of superstition looked backward to isolation, 
so the law of science points forward to even deeper 
and richer unity of thought and heart ! 

But to return to the hard conditions of the se- 
cluded hamlets of which I spoke. Some are many 
centuries old, and suffer little change in the lapse of 
ages. Some are mere groups of log-huts, their root's 
held down by stones, with footpaths straggling from 
house to house ; rudely furnished, the sum of their 
literature and art, a Bible abstract, a reading book, 
and a few dauby prints. Even here, you will proba- 
bly find a school. But in many of the better sort, 
especially where a tidy inn stands waiting for the 
traveler, you will find that taste for delicate carving 
by hand which the Swiss seem to have caught from 
glacier, waterfall, frost, and storm, — a national ge- 
nius for fine art, transmitted through centuries, and 
compressed by natural conditions within narrow and 
domestic limits. Amidst the roar of waterfalls and 
under the beetling mountains, deft fingers beside cot- 
tage doors are cutting out of bits of wood their dainty 
chamois, scarce larger than your thumb-nail. The 
isolated life I have described has been common in all 
periods of Swiss history, and in earliest times was 
almost universal ; and it took hundreds of years after 
the settlement by Germanic tribes, to say nothing of 



202 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



the earlier colonization by the Romans, for even the 
conception of national unity to be formed among the 
scattered tribes. Another obstacle to unity was the 
warlike character of the early communities, fostered 
by an environment more suited, as we have seen, to 
make the endurance and courage of a soldier than 
the free insight of a seer or poet. The Swiss have 
therefore been a contentions people from the begin- 
ning to the end. All the nationalities of the con- 
tinent have been continually dashing against each 
other in these narrow highlands, just as the conti- 
nent itself seems pressed inward by some centripetal 
force, which upheaved it into this stormy sea. Ev- 
ery canton was a kind of Sparta, and the warfare of 
petty antagonisms that went on for centuries prom- 
ised anything but the unity and freedom now attain- 
ed. I know of nothing resembling them but the ri- 
valries and conflicts of the Greek states, which ended 
in a very different way. I shall not enter on the 
wonderful story of their achievement to-night, but 
will only say in passing that a staunch individualism 
persistently bore witness to the isolating power of 
the mountain walls, while it kept awake and vigilant 
the spirit of liberty, and is now justified by its fruits. 
Observe that as the civil feuds wore out, the old 
habits ran down into a taste for foreign military ser- 
vice, which I ascribe to no special mercenariness in 
the Swiss character, as is often assumed, but to the 
ancient military spirit demanding fresh fields abroad, 
especially in the poorer Catholic cantons ; and to the 
mountaineer's natural longing to escape into the open 
world. Their passion for emigration is not more 
characteristic than their industry and persistence; and 
the stern training of centuries must have brought 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



203 



from the Alps their tenderness as well as their vigor, 
for the Swiss heimweh to have become a proverb 
through the world. The martial energy of the 
Catholic cantons was always in demand among 
Catholic powers. The gift of whole provinces was 
strong temptation to a poor and hardy race. In 
those wars of the Middle Ages, when there was al- 
ways as much intrigue and as little principle on the 
one side as on the other, and the foreign hireling did 
the fighting in place of the citizen, it is after all the 
special courage of the Swiss adventurer, rather than 
his indifference as to which side he fought for, that 
attracts our notice. All the inbred valor and passion 
has now found field in that vigilance which is the 
eternal price of liberty ; and every able-bodied citizen 
of the little republic is a drilled and watchful min- 
uteman. Bound into the monotonous struggle with 
permanent physical conditions, by which they have 
slowly achieved their unity and freedom, the Swiss 
have great obstinacy and tenacity combined with un- 
equaled simplicity of thought and taste. They do 
not forsake ancestral laws and customs ; they nei- 
ther invent new relations nor diversify the old. For 
seven centuries they have admitted only three pro- 
found changes in their legislation. One of their 
writers has said that " in the most radical Swiss 
there is a conservative." In some remote cantons 
there are still no printed statutes, and the simplest 
form of legislation survives. The Swiss constitution, 
where the Federal Assembly elect all functionaries, 
is the simplest kind of democracy. Of a grave turn, 
avoiding passionate excitement, they are yet by a very 
natural reaction social, inquisitive, often garrulous, 
fond of fetes and rustic games. The gravity easily 



204 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



passes into disputatiousness and satire, as of people 
whom hard pull-backs have made skeptical or some- 
what jealous or even cynical. They find relief in 
humor, and in a quaint grotesqueness that is proba- 
bly the irony of reduced expectations ; have a turn 
for banter and a shrewd practical wit ; a busy fancy 
with clipt wings, as if one should say " it is a fool's 
part to climb Mont Blanc, when he can go round it." 
They carve this prudential wisdom as a prophylactic 
on the beams of their houses, leaving God to put dash 
into his avalanche and torrent, and disdain of limits 
into the cornice of the crag. Here are a few of their 
oracles of domestic architecture which I copied, as I 
went by : — 

" Whoso walks upon the street, 
Many slurs is sure to meet." 

" A pretty thing it is to build a house, 
But, alas ! I did n't count the cost." 

" This house to God's hand is resigned ; 
'T is new in front, but old behind." 

" The master's gold gave out, or you 
Would see a mansion wholly new." 

" Men are always mourning 

That the times are growing worse ; 

" If men would but live better lives, 
The times would change their course." 

" If only envy and malice would but burn, 
Fuel would not be half so dear." 

w If there be any one who can do right by all, 

With all respect I pray he teach me how 't is done." 

Or take these samples from their proverbs of thrift 
and common sense : — 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



205 



" He who hunts with a cat must bring home rats." 

"No bird flies so high, but he must come back to the 

ground." 
" Bitter mouth can't speak sweet." 
" Devil's meal turns to sand." 
" Talk to the fool, but trust the wise." 
" Lord save us from a pleasant February." 
" Snowball and scandal grow by rolling." 
" Homespun and homemade for the farmer's best." 
" One God and one coat." 
" Mist and vapor are great men's favors." 
" A word is a man." 
" Priest's sack has no bottom." 
" Lies have short legs ; " and so forth. 

One is closely reminded of Reynard the Fox, and 
the old popular satires in which the reformation of 
Middle Age oppressions in Church and State began. 
It is pleasant thus to note that the first lessons from 
the mountains were slow, sure germs of liberty and 
progress, planked in solid understanding of man and 
his honest hold on hard conditions of success. 

Time has proved it to have been no taunt, when 
the Alps said to him, " Foothold first, my brave boy, 
not wings." The grotesque skeptical humor I spoke 
of, which reminds us of the contortions of a prisoner 
wrestling with his bonds*, or of the half-formed lion 
in Milton's Creation Scene, — 44 pawing to get free 
his hinder parts," is conspicuous in Swiss art. In 
Bern a knock-kneed, woe-begone wooden giant flour- 
ishes a monstrous sword on a tower and is called 
44 Goliath of Gath." 

Every one has heard of the inevitable Bears of 
Bern ; great bears and little bears, ogre bears carved 
on fountains, clad in armor, sentinels at the gates 
and on the squares, burlesques of humanity in all 



206 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



kinds ; the live public bears kept in a court-yard and 
castle ; the puppet bears running out and in the old 
clock tower, when the harlequin strikes the hammer, 
and the cock flaps his wings and squeaks, and the 
old iron knight beats the heavy bell far up aloft. 
What a good-natured travesty of mediaeval church 
and state that was once, and what a satire of human 
works and ways it is now, and so .fascinating the gap- 
ing crowd as much as it did centuries ago ! Bern is 
not alone among Swiss cities in its apologue and epos 
of the animal world. As the herds go gladly to the 
high pastures in the spring, so the wild beasts of the 
mountains have come down into the streets to sit as 
models, and teach art. These qualities combine with 
climatic influences to give great picturesqueness to 
the architecture and life. A Swiss farm-house seems 
to be evolved out of the rugged pine and the rock- 
strewn, carved, and splintered crag, and the village is 
a huddle of mountain utilities and ingenuities. The 
cities are quaint enough. The houses of Bern rest 
upon heavy stone arches, forming a covered arcade 
on both sides of the streets. The intervals between 
the piers are filled with wares of all kinds, which 
often overflow these too narrow limits. The popula- 
tion swarms along these sheltered walks, on which 
obscure doorways open, disclosing stairways and 
caves dimmer still. As you look down the streets, 
the line of massive piers looks cold and hard. But 
the long windows above, of ever- varying style of arch 
and jamb; the pretty openwork balustrades, and their 
red cushions and gay curtains and bright flowers; the 
innumerable dormer windows of all sizes and in all 
positions; the quaint chimneys bristling in hosts over 
all the roofs like a maze of impish forms, dancing on 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 207 



the housetops; the overhanging eaves, oddly orna- 
mented and thrusting down straggling spouts and 
water-tubes everywhere ; the grotesque ever-flowing 
fountains with their stone bears, lions, knights, har- 
lequins, ogres, and their great round basins brim- 
ming with bright waters ; the parti-colored caps and 
kirtles of the women who frequent them, with buckets 
dripping, and the great currents that run down the 
middle of the pavements, — all throw a charming 
play of light and life about the brown sandstone walls 
that imprison a clean and busy population. Outside, 
along the river, terraced gardens descend the bluff to 
the rushing Aar, overlooked by a labyrinth of quaint 
architecture, which has grown up in bits and piece- 
meal, to suit the changing moods or convenience of 
generations, and so has resulted in a thousand unde- 
signed beauties. The closeness and the picturesque- 
ness, the dark and the light, are alike strange to the 
American, and he learns what perhaps he needs to 
know, that republican liberty can strike its roots into 
the past as well as flourish its eager boughs in the 
open air of the present. The social and domestic 
virtues are fostered by the very insecurity and help- 
lessness of individuals amidst the gigantic forces of 
nature. The serious meaning of marriage and par- 
entage and friendship and mutual dependence is felt 
in Switzerland in fullest force. The inviolable sanc- 
tities of home are here (and have always been) the 
root of patriotic sentiment, and the soul of poetry 
and music and legend and faith. Are not the Alps 
their monitors in all generations ? These mountain- 
severities are ethical laws ; these serenities are loy- 
alty and fidelity ; this light and shadow is the play 
of tenderness and love. There are lessons too in 



208 THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



social self-restraint; and in some neighborhoods the 
people have learned instinctively to adjust their 
family responsibilities to their means of support, and 
have given to this rare wisdom the dignity of estab- 
lished rule. There are no rustic festivals so common 
as those that bring together the people of the moun- 
tains and the valleys. In Canton Vaud the lake-shore 
folk used to load themselves with harvest fruits and 
go up to visit the Alpine herdsmen, who feasted them 
with cream and cheese, and there was music and dan- 
cing around the chalets far up in the sky. In leafing 
time of the vine, the national song commencing on 
the shore was taken up from terrace to terrace, and 
carried from height to height, to the very mountain 
tops. In autumn, the vintagers lifted their great 
banner inscribed " ora et labora," (pray and work) 
and marched through the streets of Vevey celebrat- 
ing agriculture with all Switzerland to see. 

That some taint of avarice should have touched a 
pinched and impoverished life is not strange, nor yet 
that the foreign wealth that cools and suns itself so 
complacently in the Swiss summer should have to 
pay for the luxury. You cannot set to work a people 
for your own pleasure without making them seem at 
least to be mercenary. That the Swiss are specially 
so, I wholly deny, and with some experience to back 
me. In Unterwald the people explain the absence 
of mile-stones and sign-posts by saying that from 
old times it was every one's business to guide the 
traveler on his way. I roamed over Switzerland for 
months, yet rarely met inhospitality or rudeness ; and 
I confess I was not a little surprised thereat, in view 
of what the people have to endure from selfish and 
arrogant visitors. 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



209 



For free nations, or states striving for liberty, to 
charge the Swiss with churlishness is almost atrocious. 
This mountain fortress and its brave defenders have 
been a refuge to the thinkers and reformers of every 
race, sect, and class. The greatest names in Euro- 
pean history are debtors to them for happiness, for 
health, for security, for knowledge, or for final rest. 
The footsteps of Goethe are tracked through the Gri- 
son valleys. The grave of Schelling is in the little 
churchyard of Ragatz. The inspiration of Schiller 
came in part from these lakes and mountains which he 
never saw ; and who knows not, that the lake of Tell 
is musical with his poetry and his praise ? Byron 
and Shelley, Rousseau and Voltaire, Lamartine and 
Hugo, Gibbon and Necker, and De Stael, and a host 
of others found stimulus for their best work on the 
shores of Lake Leman, whose vine-clad hills rise in 
steps of music to the heights where sunset lingers 
till the stars appear. There Parker rested 'from an 
American burden and heat so long and grandly borne. 
There Quinet, crown of French genius, who would 
not swear allegiance to a despot, found a home among 
the peasants and their vines. Every spot on the 
mountains, or by the lakes, which strangers love to 
see, is identified with men who have moved the 
world. The crags that for ages frowned on the rude 
fathers of the wilderness now beckon the Parlia- 
ment of Science and the Pilgrims of Liberty in the 
name of their children. 

The intellect of the Swiss is not speculative, but 
practical ; free thinking, but not introversive. They 
have neither Italian intuition, nor French method, 
nor German depth. Their mental gifts are the flow- 
ering of those qualities that befit the mountain guide ; 

14 



210 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



sharp-eyed for things close at hand and for minute 
details. They have inventive faculty, and some 
genius for discovery, less in the positive sciences. 
And so the attractions of the Alps for men of science 
i and culture secure opportunities which have helped 
to bring out a list of native names that place Switz- 
erland in the front rank of nations. Strange as it 
may seem, in all that concerns the foundations of 
social order, the primal floors of virtue, public and 
private, the Swiss are idealists. I need but instance 
their patriotic valor, their prevailing morality, their 
fine ardor for the universal diffusion of knowledge, 
their noble philanthrophy, — fine petals all, of this 
human Alp-rose which the whole world loves to study 
and admire in its snow-girt home. Each of them de- 
serves detailed description, on which it is impossible 
even to enter. Every form of benevolent and edu- 
cational institution is at home in every canton and 
every important town. From the noble hospice on 
the mountain pass of St. Bernard, where Catholicism 
sends her relays of noble monks, each band to endure 
the rigors of the climate till they compel it to give 
place to another, that the traveler may not perish in 
the snows, the spirit of mutual aid flows down through 
the land on every side, and crowns every fair outlook 
with its asylum for the unfortunate, its house of de- 
liverance from some human ill. 

The wisest of the nations have sat at the feet of 
the Swiss educators. The triumphs of the humble 
republic have been in laying highways for the mind 
as well as the feet. And the strong guide who lifts 
the fallen traveler out of the crevasse, or saves him 
from the avalanche, or helps him up the peak of out- 
look and delight, is presenting in parable the dealing 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 211 



of his people with the erring, the ignorant, and the 
poor. And so ends the long struggle with conditions 
that threatened a helpless self-absorption in the pov- 
erty, isolation, mutual jealousy, and cramping terrors 
of their mountain world. Do not the laws of Nature 
justify our new religion of absolute trust in their in- 
trinsic harmony with man ? In this strain, Shelley, 
poet-prophet of the century, sang his grand hymn of 
homage to Mont Blanc, — 

" Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal 
Large codes of fraud and wo ; . . . 

The secret strength of things 
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome 
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee ! 
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, 
If to the human mind's imaginings 
Silence and solitude were vacancy ? " 

The strenuous, tenacious, dogmatic spirit of the old 
Swiss must under such training have softened into 
something of this tender relation with natural laws. 
Even out of such a temperament and its bitter ages 
of strife, there has bloomed a finer flower than tol- 
eration, — even liberty of thought. The mountain 
presence is too real to suffer any religious forms it 
has once suggested, to fail of an instant inspiration 
for the simple folk, who are more intimately moved 
by its motion and rest, its silence and sound, its perils 
and its protections, its all-encompassing serenity and 
strength, whether they know it or not, than by any 
traditional creed. The cheery peasant above the 
clouds, listening for the horn that makes his wilder- 
ness glad, is singing in the very attitude and glow of 
his being, though not in words, " On Alpine heights 
a loving Father dwells." And the Soul of Nature, 
nearer than the man-made Christ of churches, must 



212 THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 

have its part, and keep it too, through the repetition 
of life-times, in that seemly ritual of the Grison shep- 
herds, when, returning from high pastures in the au- 
tumn, the festive train pauses at a certain spot, and 
then and there, with bared heads and folded palms, 
praises God in silence for the blessings of the year. 
Let us be grateful to Berthold Auerbach for so gra- 
ciously fulfilling in his novels the part of invisible 
guide through many of the mysteries of the spirit in 
Alpine homes. And now let me take you to a pas- 
toral scene in Eastern Switzerland, that you may 
see the simplicity of life with which freedom loves 
to dwell. It shall be in the wide green valley of the 
Upper Rhine, in canton Graubiinden, near Ragatz. 

It was a clear, crisp day in May. The snow pow- 
dered the pines far up their climbing hosts, and lay 
heaped in gleaming hollows, and sheeted the long 
ridges, and tossed up against the tallest granite and 
pines. Meadows and orchards were alike in bloom, 
and the peasants busy at spring work. Here, at the 
meeting of many valley lines, I could see down the 
long snowy ranges of the Wallenstadt, and far into 
the blue open distance of the Triibbach, and through 
the narrowing pathway of the Rheinthal. The nar- 
row streets and green lanes of picturesque old ham- 
lets were besprinkled with children at play, driving 
snow - white herds, or leading tinkling kids ; they 
would run freely to make friends with the stranger, 
or look up brightly into my face when they spoke. 
Everybody bade me a cheery " good morning." Girls 
sat knitting under apple-trees in the orchards, between 
the long lines of sunshine and the shadows cast by 
overhanging cliffs, or came and went along the white 
road, bearing burdens on their upright heads and 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



213 



necks. Everybody indeed was at work. Neat houses 
roofed with daintily rounded shingles and set off with 
windows like honeycomb ; ever-flowing fountains, and 
basins overflowing, in whose omnipresent murmur 
health and purity seemed unstintingly poured over 
all ; hedges of thorn, that could not hide their fresh 
buds and flowers ; quaint old churches with bell-shaped 
tower, or hoodlike spire, white and clear, the little 
Gottesacker beside it, where generations had lain 
down under the changeless mountain to be seen no 
more, its long lines of gabled crosses beset with tiny 
remembrances and with gleaming letters that shot out 
like heart-flames above them ; the wood-carved mot- 
toes on the houses, devout and quaint; scattered farm- 
steads, dotting the high cliffs, or peeping out of the ap- 
ple-blooms; chalets nestling with the eagles, stretches 
of pine, then breezy ridges and mountain stairs, — 
all were folded in fullness of content, as though the 
aims of religion and science were accomplished in 
a single idyl of purity, and man and nature were one 
and the same. The most delicious home-idyls of 
modern time, Goethe's "Herman and Dorothea," and 
Schiller's "Song of the Bell," seemed breathing 
through the very atmosphere. Nor, indeed, do I be- 
lieve there can anywhere be a happier people than 
these Grison Swiss. 

Let me try to share with you one twilight scene, 
that will never leave my memory, on the threshold of 
the Bernese mountains. 

Passing through a green upland valley while cool 
shadows were descending round the immeasurable 
pine forests, we rounded a hill-shoulder and stood in 
an instant within the portal of the Alps. There was 
a hush, like gentle breathing, all through the world, 



214 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



and our first experience of Alpine life was the sinking 
of all things into rest. The wide, low intervale be- 
neath us first grew dim, as if gently receding, and 
then lay cradled within the shadows. The long 
mountain ridge still stood out against a pale sky, but 
its delicate grace and sturdy strength were relaxed 
as if in sleep, and the vigorous play of form and color 
on its far-spread countenance slowly faded into pas- 
siveness. The setting sun had been pouring floods 
of quiet light into great scoops above the snow-line, 
as if their white faces were transfigured by an in- 
dwelling soul. But now they seemed to have yielded 
up the ghost, and assumed that unearthy pallor of 
snow without sunshine, which resembles nothing else 
on land or sea, all semblance of force and feeling 
fled. They seemed withdrawn beyond vast spaces of 
somewhat as much beyond death as death is far from 
life. Over these mysteries the familiar deeps of 
evening brooded quietly and one yellow star shone 
there at home. The peasants were returning from 
labor, in groups, a sweet jangle of herd-bells and 
pleasant little voices breaking the silence and almost 
making it infinite. Patriarchal cottages of immense 
size, whose windows might be counted by scores, were 
gathering themselves as if to sleep, under the heavy 
hoodlike eaves, dropped gently over them, so that 
they lay at last like brown hillocks on the russet sod. 
Here and there, as twilight deepened, stole out a 
glimmer from some casement within the shadow; 
here and there, through an open door, the light and 
crackling of big brush fires told us of the home-circle 
and the evening meal. Groups made up, as I think, 
of as many generations as are ever permitted to look 
into each other's faces on this earth, sat silent or 



THE SWITZERLAND OF THE SWISS. 



215 



talking in underbreath on long benches under the 
outspread wings of these ancestral eaves. And a 
father had gathered his household in one quaintly 
carved porch, and was reading aloud, whether an 
evening service I know not, but it fell as a benedic- 
tion on the hearts of the travelers, as they passed 
along with hushed tread, unseen. And the silent 
prayer rose unbidden within them, — " May these 
awful Thrones of the Everlasting forever shelter the 
traditions and homes of free men." 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



Humboldt's brilliant description of the indebted- 
ness of modern freedom and science to the great epoch 
of oceanic discoveries in the fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries, is one of the most marvelous pictures in 
literature. It suggests an inquiry into which that 
great physicist did not enter, — how much culture of 
the ideal sort is due to the play of imagination (that 
organ of higher truths) with the symbolism of nature, 
read and loved for her companionship alone. The 
opportunity now afforded by the wealth of natural 
science for such reaction from ignoble interests and 
coarse competitions is not more vast than the need 
of such healthful play and noble intimacy, amidst 
these material tendencies and forces, is imperative. 
They are the deliverance that opens in the very 
bosom of the flood that sweeps us on. 

In the historic fulfillment of Solon's vision of a 
great republic of freedom and culture, islanded in 
the unknown West, a tradition which Plato honored 
as nobler than anything in Homer, — it is not the 
prophecy that impresses me, nor the Platonic political 
ideal, nor the splendid fortunes of the new Atlantis 
itself, so much as the meaning, — for the higher ele- 
ments of personality, of this passion for unexplored 
worlds in the great deep, of man's undying instinct 
to plunge into the unknown, to commit himself to an 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



217 



infinite search, problem, resource. This, the fascina- 
tion of the sea, — that vast silent invitation, summons 
alike to limit and liberty by which man is evermore 
stirred ; so that he must sing with Theognis, listen- 
ing to its murmuring in a spiral shell : " A dead 
form cast up from lifeless water, yet speaking with 
a living voice, hath invited me home." 

Now for us moderns, whether we dredge or dream 
upon it, whether we know it as a presence, or as a 
bit of useful contrivance for our commercial profit, 
the sea really means universality ; and, whether in 
lines of thought or business, of faith in nature, or 
trust in man, really draws us to that, — not univer- 
sality as an abstract idea (the type of that is the at- 
mosphere), but as all real, living, efficient forms of 
unity. This makes it the true type of our times: 
first, of their communion of uses, in that it is solvent 
and distributor of the elements, like the trade it sus- 
tains and floats round the globe ; next, of their com- 
munion of races, in that which they are speeding 
across its surface, and on the lightning thread be- 
neath it ; and again, of their communion of religions, 
in that these are flowing together, Mediterraneans 
and Baltics of faith, into a grander identity, whose 
vast level sweeps down all heaps of exclusiveness, 
just as science suppresses old fictions about sea-levels, 
while the great tides go round the world, shaping all 
spiritual continents by common laws. 

These symbols are patent to the practical mind. 
But they are external, compared to those meanings 
of the sea for the free imagination, which have made 
it in all ages man's consoler and strengthener, teach- 
ing him by the conditions of toil, peril, and renun- 
ciation, the greatness as well as the sadness of his 



218 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



destiny. It is well to remember that the sea is not 
a mere heaving mass of salted waves. It is an idea. 
What broods over us and rolls around us on the 
shore, with stir to adventure and discovery, is the 
mystery of our own being, — that blending of long- 
ing and rest, of what we are with what we may be, 
of clinging to the known and call from the unknown, 
which makes the pith of all earnest human thought. 
This bitter brine, this barren waste, this low moan as 
of heart-break, are the limitations that beset our life, 
— our sense of failure in the past, of impotence in 
the present, of decay in the future. The boundless 
reach, the mystic winds and currents, the grand up- 
lift of unseen power over far horizons into depth of 
sky, are the ideal insights and faiths that transform 
these limits into enforcements of courage and desire. 
How full is man's speech and song of these types of 
his most nobly human life ! 

Homer compares the parting of friends, never to 
meet again, to seamen borne away from shore by 
stormy winds, watching the fire kindled by a shep- 
herd in his lonely fold high among the hills. 

The Hindu proverb says, " As pieces of driftwood 
meeting in mid-ocean remain together but a little 
while, so friends and possessions pass; there is no 
return." 

It was a Greek legend that one, exempt from the 
common lot of death, was dwelling beyond where 
ocean stayed its waves, delighting his heart with 
golden-throned morning, which rises, ever renewed, 
out of its bosom. But when old age came on, then 
came, too, the inevitable sorrow for lost companion- 
ship and energies decayed ; there remained but vain 
and endless yearning for the happy lot of men who 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



219 



have the power to die. Philologists may call this 
"fable of Tithonus old," a "solar myth;" but sun 
and sea do not explain, they do but voice this note 
of human sadness, the longing to escape death, for- 
ever joined in mind with the conditions of decrepi- 
tude and loss involved in that escape, — the dull end- 
less plash of low-beached years on a prisoning shore, 
bringing no births of power to stem new perils, or 
reach nobler worlds by loosing the hold on this. 
Such the meaning of this old appeal to the symbol- 
ism of the sea. It is answered by the unchanging 
soul of poetry after a thousand generations of man. 

"Oh well for the fisherman's boy, 

That he shouts with his sister at play ! 
Oh well for the sailor lad, 

That he sings in his boat on the bay ! 

And the stately ships go on 

To the haven under the hill ; 
But oh for the touch of a vanished hand, 

And the sound of a voice that is still ! 

Break, break, break, 

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea ! 
But the tender grace of a day that is dead 

Will never come back to me." 

See where Pindar resorts when he would describe 
the sacred quest of love and duty, singing of Her- 
cules that " He traversed all lands, and went through 
the heavy sea- waves ; and, having calmed the mar- 
iner's path from fear, he dwells in joy among the 
blest." 

Is that the mere picture of the sun's progress 
through the zodiac, which the labors of Hercules 
mean for the philologist ? 

Ocean means for thinking man the might that 



220 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



grows from patient disciplines, the toil that earns 
victory, the unappeasable purpose that gladly fulfills 
all conditions of success. Thus old philosophers ex- 
plained it as the " sweat of the earth," made bitter 
by straining through it, or as made to seethe and boil 
by the sun's heat, or as running swiftly round the 
earth (wkzuvos, from <okvs, the swift), just as the He- 
brew said of the sun, " at His commandment it run- 
neth hastily." The Norse Edda chooses for a sym- 
bol of these human conditions of success the struggle 
with the ocean's barrier and advance, to widen the 
borders of the land. 

" Gefion from Gylfe drove away, 
To add new land to Denmark's sway, — 
Blythe Gefion ploughing in the smoke 
That steamed up from her oxen-yoke ; 
Dragging new lands from the deep main 
To join them to the sweet isle's plain." 1 

Mark the prophecy of sea-born, sea-worn Holland, 
nurse and guardian of modern liberties, educational, 
political, religious. 

The sense of irreversible moral sequence has also 
lent meaning to the sea. Grecian tragedy says 
" retribution grows slowly, like the wave that rolls 
up the black sand." 2 

The Greeks even held the ocean to be the father 
of Nemesis, or ethical requital, 3 by that majestic re- 
serve of impending natural power with which it con- 
fronts the unnaturalness of the very crimes which 
yet it seems so to shelter that their success bewilders 
our moral sense. Thus Greek Sophocles saw, as you 
and I have done, — nor lost his faith in the ocean's 
higher law, — that 

1 Heimskringla, Laing, 220. 2 Sophocles, Antigone? 586. 

3 Pausanias, II., 178. 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



221 



" No wind retards the pirate's work, 
When his time comes for theft and plundering." 1 

Even the pirate was puppet of an oceanic destiny, 
not in his own purpose. And men divined a sweep 
of space and service, of the sea's own proportion and 
quality ; and thus bards of the old Norse kings cele- 
brate a courage and will that builded states, — that 
spiritual parentage of our stirring life. 

" Eiders of dark-hlue ocean's steeds ! 
The king who at the helm guides 
His warlike ship through clashing tides, 
Now gives one law for all the land — 
A heavenly law, which long shall stand. 
A clang of arms by the sea-shore — 
And the shields' sound was heard no more ; 
On Esthland's strand, o'er Swedish graves, 
The East Sea sings her song of waves." 2 

" Forests and hills are not for me, — 
I love the moving sea. 
Though Canute block the Sound, 
Rather than walk the ground, 
And leave my ship, I '11 see 
"What my ship will do for me." 3 

Was it piracy that taught these Norse rovers to 
place their Mimir's well, or wisdom fount, at the 
bottom of the farthest sea, where Odin earns it at 
the cost of an eye ? That means, in the philologist's 
dictionary, that they saw the sun's one orb sink into 
the sea as if lost. That may be ; but the kernel 
will not appear till we crack this shell also. For a 
happy legend is always a song out of the singer's 
heart; and if it lasts through generations, it is be- 
cause it means a gospel of man's ideal life. And 
this is indeed his Mimir's well beyond ocean's rim, 
reached only by paying the price, — by parting with 

1 Sophocles, Philoctetes, 643. 2 Heimskringla, Laing, passim. 
3 Id., II., 256. 



222 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



the sight one had for a larger and better knowledge 
hidden beyond perilous tracks that close behind the 
lonely voyager and leave the next heroic seeker to 
find his own way ; yet ever pursued over sunset- 
kindled waves through hopes of an all-compensating 
light. Too much for the heathen world to see? 
Ah, man is man, and the poet in him is ever greater 
than the pedant, though he have read no Bible but 
his soul. Ideal aspiration and the battle of life have, 
after all, one mother-tongue, one in its elements; and 
nature responds to their experience, which the un- 
derstanding may afterwards analyze or make more 
complex, or religion fix in personal symbols ; but the 
process engrafts no new humanity ; it is ever the 
same spiral conch of life that murmurs its prophecy 
within the listening soul of child or man. 

Well ! the fisheries are a great commercial ques- 
tion, and employ the deputies of nations ; but think 
you this high diplomacy, more or less respectable, 
about the right to cod and haddock alongshore, can 
hide the value of that old story of Glaucus, the 
mythic fisherman, whose delight in the vigor of his 
netted prey stirred swift longing for an ocean birth ; 
so that he ate the herbs of the shore, and became a 
sea-god, putting his human breast under a hundred 
streams ? Here again, the human thirst for irrepres- 
sible joy and strength uses the sea and the fisher's 
craft for its symbol. I do not despise the fishery 
rights: there is money and food in them for one 
nation or another ; but the old fable is better : it 
means manhood for us all. And thus the tale goes 
on. Then the gods make this old sea-lover a prophet, 
and the people of the coasts and isles look to him 
for their warnings and hopes. And he it is that 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



223 



builds the Argo, freighted with tragic story of con- 
quests and sympathies for the Mediterranean races, 
this ever-thirsty fisherman, fed by the salt herbs 
of the shore. Well, I think the poetic truth car- 
ries the day over the superstition here, and so in 
the larger belief that all sea-gods were human proph- 
ets. To the sea belong the legendary teachers of the 
simple tribes of East and West, in the arts of life. 
Out of its mysteries comes up Phoenician Oannes, 
half fish, half man ; into them sails away Mexican 
Quetzalcoatl, beautiful fugitive from the world he 
has blessed, thence to return in better days. For 
Hindu, Greek, and Hebrew, out of heaving deluge- 
waters, come the good men, in saving arks, to repeo- 
ple the desert earth. Out of ocean, after the " Twi- 
light " of the Norse gods, and their ending of the 
world, rise these fresh isles, where a new race finds 
the old dice of destiny unharmed in springing grass. 
Do not new religions rise thus, from the un wasting 
soul, when the old are outworn, and have passed 
away? The Roman poet, Lucretius, whose protest 
against superstition anticipated so much of modern 
science, makes the sea outlast the world : — 

" Worn out with age, the Universe decays, 
Borne on and stranded on the shoals of time." 

It is a mystic sentence of the Platonist, Proclus, 
that " Ocean is, in sum, the cause of all motion, both 
intellectual and natural," and a true one, if we will 
read the symbol between the lines. It is no mere 
water-tank, this restless, heaving, many-voiced, vast, 
mysterious sea. 

II. Enough of mythology. Note now the minis- 
tration of the sea to that inward renovator, the sense 



224 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



of reaction and surprise. The dredge is now revo- 
lutionizing our notions of limit, as once the telescope 
did. It reports that the sea-spaces show nowhere a 
zero point of animal life, nowhere a pressure too great 
for living tissues ; that ammonia and water are there 
decomposed by life without the agency of light — an 
impossibility in the atmosphere ; that at two thousand 
fathoms the water is not appreciably denser. These 
surprises indeed show the human god, parting with 
his old sight to win new wisdom. That is the spir- 
itual sense of science. Again, we thought the sea's 
bed was our nearest type of the unfathomable, but 
now we find its greatest depth a little more than four 
thousand fathoms. Yet every atom of that depth is 
more unsearchable than ever. That is the spirit's 
report, not the dredger's. We thought the bottom- 
waters were heated by the earth-fires ; they are at 
about the freezing point of fresh water. We had 
visions of a motionless calm beneath the waves ; but 
there, too, is the sweep of currents, passing each 
other like busy men, and stir of living purpose. Is 
the sea less ideal for rebuking dreams of an idle 
heaven and a purposeless peace ? " Plant-life is 
possible there," predicted science, " but animal life 
must surely be stayed at the coralline zone." But, 
behold, it is the plant that is limited, and the hidden 
floors of nature, bare of herb or flower, are thick 
with the sensitive pleasure of infusorial forms. 

Cross the Atlantic, and you shall know how far 
the ocean can carry this function of breaking spells, 
and renovating by surprise. The sea voyage is a 
stream of oblivion. It devastates the mind ; vacates 
memory ; sweeps away tradition, fiction, routine, and 
blind belief ; scatters fixed moods and haunting 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



225 



sorrows ; takes you from your very self. You shall 
not think, nor study, nor grieve, nor will, beneath 
this heavy hand of the sea. That old personality of 
yours, that looked so real, suffers a " sea change ; " 
for you are drawn apart, as by ten thousand mag- 
nets, dissipated on this restless, heaving space, and 
can but wait a resurrection in some new and won- 
drous form, on some virgin shore. So every passing 
sail is a white mystery of expectant faith ; and the 
first land that looms is the new-born world, and the 
watchman on the cliff is Adam, before the fall. 
The Old World before you, the old life behind, 
alike transfigured, you are 

" the first that ever burst 
Into that silent sea." 

Have you dreamed of waking into a life beyond 
death ? It was no such spiritual uplift as this new 
dawn of unimagined light. 

There is a poet in every man, and his hour comes 
in the surprises of the sea. The shout of Xeno- 
phon's weary army at sight of the far-gleaming 
Euxine, — " Thalatta ! Thalatta ! " — the cry of Bal- 
boa when the Pacific first rose to view over the 
cliffs of Panama, kindle imagination to its very roots. 
Nay, some poor, little, rude print of the Dungansby 
Head, — such as I recall from my boyhood, — an 
impossible John o' Groat's House, toppling on an 
impossible jut of rock, over an inch square of black 
blotch that meant the ocean, and the happ}' house- 
holder, too big for his own house, because grown to 
a giant with the familiar vision of that immensity 
which I could not see, standing at gaze on its tip- 
top, — shall set the child's imagination to more crea- 

15 



226 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA, 



tive work than comes in after years, by the grandest 
sea-truth the artist ever painted, or the poet sang. 

The mountain is the natural type of strength and 
vision ; the river, cleaving and carving fresh path- 
ways, of reconstruction and reform. But the sea 
means universality ; the Infinite and Eternal, speak- 
ing in its murmur, when the philosopher cannot find 
them in his logic, and the theologian has sunk them 
in his human God, shall assert their implication in 
man's ideal life. But its summons at the same time 
is to liberty and labor, as the condition of that life. 

This was what the Hebrew lacked in his aspir- 
ing religion, which was a lyric of prayer, but not of 
progress nor of toil. Therefore, while he longed for 
what he called the Eternal and Infinite, he never 
loved the sea. His Jehovah speaks from under a 
firmament. In his Apocalypse, " there shall be no 
more sea," as in the Buddhist Nirvana there shall 
be "no more wind." Greek, Phoenician, Teuton, 
would not have said either of those things. The 
Christian follows him in a religion inherited from 
the same tendencies, limiting the Infinite to a sin- 
gle human nucleus, once for all, instead of sweeping 
out its endless and boundless tides of invitation and 
possibility, an all-embracing sea of spiritual life. 
Here and there a mystic sings " Christ is a sea of 
truth and love," but the metaphor comes hard ; 
it is easier to make him a sacrificial Lamb or a 
Messiah-King. The Hebrew knew not the terrible 
unrest of the land, — earthquake, volcano, snow- 
storm on the prairie, tornado in the populous town. 
He nursed his creed and his pride in his little 
chosen land. From Abraham to the Maccabees, his 
self-sacrifice is to an awful God, whose hand smites 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



227 



from beneath the firmament, or invites to self-sur- 
render through blood or through love, to what its 
mastership commands ; his is not the flight of the 
soul through boundless spaces, with freedom on its 
wings. The Bible has its warnings against the rest- 
less pride of knowledge, — the Babel towers of push- 
ing labor ; what would it have said to the perils of 
oceanic steam navigation, or even of locomotion by 
rail, making the land an open sea, — ventures where- 
of it could not even conceive ? The Hebrew loved 
not the sea. The Chinese is in his furrow, and 
dreads it. The Hindu is on his mountain, and can- 
not come down to it. The one lacks ideal freedom, the 
other expansive toil. First of men, the stirring, ven- 
turous, irrepressible Greek hails the sea as a home: — 

" Ocean, father of gods and men ! " 

Let me try to picture this Greek sense ; for we too 
inherit it, though we hear but little about it. 

If you will look over a boat's side on a breezy day, 
along the water level, as you bound past groups of 
islands into open sea, you can understand why men 
have held water to be the primal element. What 
productive energy in this undulation, vital in every 
atom, — these multitudinous waves, so swift to break 
up sunshine into fiery flakes, and fling it off in a rain 
of delight ! How mobile and plastic this liquid ele- 
ment, obedient to stir of wind, to lead of tide ! To 
the unseen brooding powers it seems to say, " Shape 
me as you will — I am ready for your largest as for 
your finest thought — to your light and your law." 
Were they not right who said the earth was its prod- 
uct ? Are not the green isles its children, the con- 
tinents its heaped sediment, records of its secular 



228 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



art ? Has it not piled the uncounted layers ? Are 
they not its footfalls, its architecture? And as the 
creatures came swarming in their time and order, 
has it not numbered and fed them, and laid them to 
rest under its gentle rain of atoms, — the continents 
crumbled, as they had been builded, by its hand ? 

In this restless liberty of motion it is a natural 
human instinct that reads the visible conditions of 
beauty, order, life. Yes, even for the Hebrew, " the 
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," 
ere the dry land appeared. So ancient myth and 
modern science, poetry and progress, unite to hail 
the fatherhood of the sea. 

Well may we fancy this rippling laughter, this 
pulsing rise and fall, this long commingling and com- 
motion, to be the very quiver of the fecund life that 
swarms beneath, foreshadowing all forms that exist 
elsewhere ; types of the bird's wing, the insect's ten- 
tacles, the mammal's spine, the human hand, its won- 
drous feel and spread and muscular grasp ; flowing 
types of every herb and tree, arborescent coral, par- 
terres and rainbow gardens on dull rocks ; types of 
every spiritual fact or law that makes penalty or 
progress, — the oyster s patient deposit of noble pearl 
around the wound that cannot be healed ; the holo- 
thuria, shedding off what members he cannot feed, 
adapting size and living to his income ; the mining 
teredo, finding a path of his own through the already 
riddled timber, without so much as crossing or mar- 
ring the million tracks of his fellow laborers ; the 
sea-anemone, that can fast as long as fate demands, 
and hides his purple and gold in dark submerged 
rifts, serving uses unseen and unknown for ages to 
come; the self-perpetuating stone forests that outlive 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



229 



our Gothic traceries, and show that only tireless pa- 
tience builds for endless time ; the echinus, quarrying 
hard rocks with delicate spines, that no repulsion can 
discourage ; that glassy thread-work of gossamer and 
star that girdles the soft sponge, a fragile grace, un- 
harmed by rush of currents, strong by the inviolable 
dignity of beauty and trust ; the teeming infusorial 
tribes that form mountains and continents of their 
cast-off shells, infinite fecundity of the minute ; vast 
issue of forces that live but to tender to the whole 
their own infinitesimal lives without haste or rest, and 
lose themselves in a world-destiny, that weaves their 
moments into its weft of countless years ; swept 
down the great rivers of the globe in yearly monu- 
mental heaps, that dwarf pyramids of kings into 
petty mounds that cover poor human bones ; invis- 
ible batteries that multiply their fires till they be- 
come seas of lightning and storms of electric power, 
— of all sea wonders the best type of spiritual force 
and law, of the infinite in the finite, the God in 
the atom, strength in weakness, liberty in limit, life 
through death. 

Look here, O scientific brother, at the marvelous 
meaning of generative power ; and see how every 
step in evolution involves an infinite element, that 
forever forbids us to confound parentage with causal 
production, or to account for life only by that which 
lies behind or beneath it. 

But let us accept the laws of limit, and cling to the 
shore. See how the universal meets us here also. 
Take up a handful of this fine sand ; mark how scent 
of sea-weed and stir of minute life mingle with gleam- 
ing powder of pearly shells, and friction of graveled 
stone. When the great deep would lay its new foun- 



230 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



dations, what element has it forgotten, in its impartial 
art of evolving that common earth that shall be fresh 
herb and flower, and beast and man ? 

Can you stoop to what lies under your feet ? Mere 
bits of tide-water plash, left in rock-hollows, swarm- 
ing with eager life, preach the universality and spir- 
itual meaning of the sea. Sauntering on rocks be- 
tween the tide-marks, your feet crush at every step 
what seem heaps of salt-spray, flung dry and dead 
upon the shore. They are the cities of the barnacle, 
silent, far-spread rock-prisms, aping alike the tents 
of the nomad and the petrified city of the poet. Yet 
within every one hides a wonderful life ; a tender in- 
stinct animates every stone-crypt of them all ; a pa- 
tience not to be balked is waiting its hour. When the 
unhasting tide oversweeps these dry expanses with 
its flood of opportunity, every rock-sepulchre opens, 
gathering air and food with vibrations as regular as 
your pulse, as ardent as wing of shore bird flitting 
above it. You have crushed this dry crackling spray, 
without any of the scruple that John Chinaman has 
in harming bits of written paper, or of the dread of 
the Jew at possible treading on the name of Jehovah. 
But turn and look at your track. It is wet. Every 
stone casing you ground down held sea-water stored 
up for the drought of low tides, within its parched 
cell. Well might he be patient, the little hermit, till 
his flood-tide came. How tender and timely is the 
wide sweep of instinct, teaching the wild goose to 
find her path through " desert and illimitable air," 
and rock-bound barnacle to store his measured sup- 
plies ! It is almost touching to think of this little 
living prisoner, more firmly bound to his rock as he 
grows, yet making of the friendly tide his own world 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



231 



of beautiful growth, his liberty of the limitations of 
his lot. See how, as he grows, he adorns the seg- 
ments of his white cone till they are ridged like teeth 
and fluted like Ionic columns ; and on islands far out 
at sea, I have wondered at their bended length and 
graceful slenderness and their great clustered efflores- 
cence, covering roods of rock with their luxury of 
growth and grace. 

But is this stone-bound creature a mere passive 
fixture ? No ! He records the beauty of the law he 
serves. What more than that can you or I do with 
life ? and how many of us do it ? He marches to the 
limit of the tides, and registers their steadfast pulse. 
See that creamy line, stretching along the rocky 
shore for miles, holding its perfect level round crag 
and through cove, past beaches and woody capes : it 
is the barnacle's high-water mark. If a hand bended 
the rainbow, an eye leveled that line as well. Can 
you or I lift and lay the lines of conduct in such har- 
mony with the laws and limits of our spheres ? 

He can be tied fast, yet a traveler, using the 
freedom of another. He makes fast to unwieldy 
crabs, to restless lobsters ; he goes with swift ships 
around the world. Whatever he touches he clings 
to, following its fortunes, — not to be detached with- 
out force. What human quality does this adhesive- 
ness suggest ? Obstinacy, tenacity, persistency, in- 
ertia, or faithfulness and love ? Each and all, as 
your mood inclines ; the sea is liberal to your taste. 

But what a hold-fast have these puny creatures ! 
See what the pretty purple mussel-shell can do. 
Those tight valves will defy your force ; no dash of 
tides can harm them ; they are actually weaker than 
the little ligament that embodies the living instinct 



232 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



not to open that house to a destructive prying hand, 
though it be from a higher power than it can meas- 
ure. What poor cringing creeds and revivalisms 
men might escape with a little of this valve-strength 
of self-respect ! To let one's self be scared by one's 
own sense of weakness into unreasoning self-abandon- 
ment to another as his soul salvation is just to bring 
about the very evil which makes weakness a ground 
for dread. Well, there is a wisdom of weakness, in 
barnacle or brain, — it is to hold thine own till thou 
art strong enough to admit all comers, or to repel, 
naked, the intruders on an inward order they would 
destroy. And cling, O friend, however venturous it 
may seem, cling to that which life has taught thee 
to be best for thee. Cling, O human heart, to what 
thou knowest of thine own finding ; to what thou 
art building within thee after thy best instinct and 
will. Cling, and the strength of the sea shall help 
thee. Even on the stone-bottom of the pool the little 
patella-plates elude the hand's grasp, and refuse to 
be pushed or pried from their hold. Everywhere 
eager projectors want to utilize your force for their 
machinery ; but remember, your force is in your own 
fit place and proper work ; and if you have learned 
these, and love them better than ease, or fame, or 
profit, then let no charges of indolence, indifference, or 
waste of power on what is of comparatively no public 
worth, disturb your soul, though the fusillades, which 
proved ineffectual to change it, end in shelving and 
contempt. Be genial through it all, as he who knows 
that he can make his own work shine, but never 
another man's. Do not be put to shame by star-fish 
and sea-flower that can mantle the loneliest hollows 
of muddy rocks among drifting sea-weed with splen- 
dors of their own. 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



233 



The sea is universal. Its tidal pools fail not to 
mirror vices also. What a picture of monopoly and 
greed are these lightning-like atoms, savages of this 
wilderness of minims, raging in hordes of compe- 
tition through aqueous forests. Tartars without a 
Tchingis to give them laws, and devouring each other 
like the sharks and cormorants of human politics and 
trade ! Is it a metempsychosis that I see in these 
voracious shrimps, making the pool alive with their 
fierce wriggling; fastening on everything that can 
be eaten, as the speculator does on the rag currency 
he wants to see thrown in heaps to his scrambling ; 
heaping themselves upon it, and rolling it up and 
over with themselves in a ball of struggling appe- 
tites ? Note, too, the hermit-crab, clutching at some 
dead cockle, and burying himself in its shell, like 
one who tries to save his soul by creeping into some 
outworn creed of another man's or another age's 
building, or thrusts himself into some vicariously 
atoning death for the keeping of a paltry life. 

But the great deep has its types of character, as 
well as the petty pool. The immensity forgets not 
personal forces, but reflects their manifoldness in 
speech that is not Saxon, nor Sanscrit, nor Bible He- 
brew, nor parlor French, but human, — the sullen roar 
of solitary reefs ; the generous roll of all-compassing 
tides ; the passionate gurgle and rush of pent waters 
through hollows that are their sole vents ; the garru- 
lous rattle over light, pebbly beaches ; the soft con- 
tinuous plash of surf on smoother floors of sand, as of 
love in happy homes, and the rippling of wavelets 
at child's play about the rocks ; and beyond all, low 
and far, yet close as his own breathing, the all-dis- 
solving and enfolding murmur, where the mystery 



234 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



of existence finds its rest in the Infinite and Eternal. 
O mystic pantheist, that sol vest doubts and faiths 
alike, O holy sea ! — shall I dare to add this line to 
that grand invocation of the poet Riickert ? 

" 0 cradle of the rising sun, O holy sea ! 
O grave of every setting sun, O holy sea ! 
The morning's and the evening's red bloom out from thee, 
Two roses of thy garden-bed, O holy sea ! 
The ships of thought sail over thee and sink in thee ; 
Atlantis rests there, mighty one, O holy sea ! 
My spirit yearneth like the moon to sink in thee ; 
Forth send me from thee like the sun, O holy sea ! " 

Shall I touch the human expressions that come 
and go in the light of its countenance, in the shadows 
of its moods ? What stoic devoutness in that long, 
imperturbable rise and fall, a pulse that moves with 
nature's law ! Then the fret and wrinkling, under 
wind-flaws of sudden humor or caprice ; the tossing 
of trouble, and the furrows of mighty toil ; then the 
leaden gloom of a despondency that shall arouse and 
reveal its power ; and then the peace that falls upon 
its pain and passion, when departing day lays a 
benediction along its furrowed brows, and the un- 
earthly touch, the radiant dream of moonlight, steals 
in music over their sleep, as 

" God's greatness flows around our incompleteness, 
Round our restlessness, His rest." 

Then busy life succeeds. On the blank horizon 
the waters quiver with expectation ; and the sun is 
born, in slow evolving purpose, now a star, now an 
arch of flame, now a world-egg, now a lengthening 
urn clinging to its watery hold, at last a self-freed 
orb, girded for the labors of the day. Is it his liv- 
ing will that stirs the sea with all-consenting desire ? 
See at last on shore that plunge of zeal, at white 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



235 



heat, against a granite resistance, that must yield 
at last, even if it be a thousand years to come ; and, 
close by, the press of green billows over the jutting 
bareness of the sea-wall, as if to clothe it anew with 
the warm life of herb and tree. 

Let me celebrate sea-walls, — long lines of piled 
granite masses, and rounded pebbles flung far up low 
ledges, on whose barrier beat and roar the self-lim- 
iting tides of open sea. Here is the mutual margin 
and equipoise of sea and land ; and this line of their 
meeting is an endless process, a fathomless mystery. 
Past and future, reminiscence and prescience, unite, 
and that point of union is a problem of thought. It 
is a record and a prophecy in one. " Whence and 
whither," the soul's ceaseless cry, is echoed in the 
untraceable ambiguity of these rolled pebbles whose 
infancy was but the sequel to stages of immeasurable 
time, and in the equally untraceable future of these 
solid floors eaten by the untiring waves. After all, 
then, the reality is that point of union in the present, 
where stands the seeing eye, conceiving past and 
future through its own relations with this unseen 
and infinite of time. It is mind that questions, it is 
mind alone that holds the reply. Look not to the 
symbol, but to that which it means. You are your- 
self the solution, and this the mystery after all, — 
that you remember, question, dream ; that you are 
rest and labor ; that you in this present instant com- 
bine the liberty and the duty that are to work while 
the day lasts, untroubled by the impenetrable depths 
behind you and before. 

This is the burden of the sea-wall's antique rune. 
Such a sea-margin is the life of the race. Before or 
behind it, what silence folds in this roar and din 



236 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



around our islet of consciousness, our sea-wall of 
time ! But what could any vision of past or future 
be, but what we make it ? In what terms, expressed 
or conceived, but what our conscious mind suggests ? 
Islet of consciousness did I say ? Say, rather, eye of 
the world, centre of these laws of spiritual percep- 
tion, that must interpret all and shape all to what 
we call knowledge. Despise not the present mo- 
ment. It is because this is so full, so dazzlingly 
bright, that past and future are so dark to man. 

Over your track to-day, O mariner of life, gathers 
the whole meaning of wisdom and care ; albeit 't is 
but a taper's shine in the great darkness, to the 
anxious eye. 

Did you ever watch from a hill-top through the 
fall of night for the beacon-lights to come out, one 
by one, along our New England coast from Penobscot 
to far Manan ; here a steady flame, there a revolving, 
now seen, now lost, but surely coming round true to 
time ? Sole hints of a world of life, where all things 
are veiled in deepening night, they alone are there 
to prove the Care that matches the perils of the sail- 
or's way. The ancients, we are reminded, made 
temples of their beacons, and made them colos- 
sal, to be seen far out at sea. The great Pharos of 
Alexandria was a light-house, library, and shrine in 
one, type of united conscience, culture, and faith. 

But for the sailor, as for the soul, safety is in self- 
reliance and a fine instinct at finding the way. Pilots 
know their bearings by the special sound of the surf 
on every beach and crag around them in the fog. 
The dark is the best teacher ; do not quarrel with 
mysteries that sharpen the perception of the facts 
and their laws. There is a symbolic wisdom in the 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



237 



sailor's two chances in a fog, to look under it or over 
it, with eye at the mast-head or at the cutwater. 
To lie very low, when you cannot get above the 
dark hour, is often deliverance. And if both fail, 
the good sailor knows that he must nevertheless go 
bravely through, patient and watchful, trusting not 
in chart and compass, old or new, so much as in 
his own soundings and fine sense of wind and tide. 
His own soundings. He knows that is safety on the 
ocean. Why will he forget it in his creed ? And 
will he have no eye to his own helm among the veer- 
ing tempests ? " O Neptune," said one of old, 
" thou mayst save or destroy me ; but whichever it 
be, I will hold this rudder true." 

The sea-shore, we say, is strewn with stranded 
relics of perishable things ; but they have at least 
been borne beyond reach of storm and tide, treas- 
ures of nature saved up for nobler purpose. 

" Here," as Thoreau says, " our hand on ocean's 
pulse, we can converse with many a shipwrecked 
crew." But the sea that makes the wreck has its 
symbolism of deliverance from all wrecks. And 
even if physical science, absorbed in analyzing pro- 
cesses of historical derivation, should insist that 
production means this derivation, and this only, 
and remand us for destiny to the dust whence we 
sprung, yet nature is the root of all science, and she 
hints, at least, a larger faith. Immortal life is be- 
yond human comprehension, but so far as apprehen- 
sion and imagination can reach it, it is written on 
the sea ; unchanging substance ; unbroken unity, 
like that indivisibility of the soul, which taught 
Plato he could not die ; reach of voice and vision 
out into infinite relations ; perpetual summons to 



238 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



larger, freer life ; untroubled rest in its own n^s- 
tery, as if to point man beyond itself to that concep- 
tion of eternal life, by which alone he recognizes 
the meaning of its touch. Not one flowing wave 
but is fast anchored there. 

I trust you have not found this peculiar treat- 
ment of the theme, still less the theme itself, deserv- 
ing as it is of so much better treatment than these 
poor hints, wanting in practical bearing. If we 
would not have mind and morals alike subdued to 
the material things we work in for private accumu- 
lation and ambition, we must study the aesthetic rela- 
tions of the world to man as its seer and shaper, 
and cherish that sense of spiritual beauty which 
guards the sanctity and freedom of the soul, and 
honor the help which the senses bring to noble liv- 
ing and genial faith. The sea is an idea, a presence, 
seen or unseen ; all about our life is that which it 
means. We may not know that we are walking by 
its side, in every serious mood, in every thought that 
defies our flippancies to questions that should have 
answer in us all. But birth and death lead straight 
to its mystic shores ; there we receive the helpless 
child; there we wave farewells to the departing; 
nor is there science, study, or belief but will bring us 
up at last before the mystery, whereof it is the sym- 
bol, to be wisely read in its sternness or its tender- 
ness alike. And if we can but bring pure ears and 
silenced passions to this presence of the unseen sea, 
we shall doubtless catch the rhythm of spiritual law, 
and calm our hastening days with " the grander 
sweep of tides serene." 

" I walked beside the evening sea, 
And dreamed a dream that could not be ; 



SYMBOLISM OF THE SEA. 



239 



The waves that plunged along the shore, 
Said only : ' Dreamer, dream no more.' 

But still the legions charged the beach, 
And rang their battle-cry, like speech ; 
But changed was the imperial strain ; 
It murmured : ' Dreamer, dream again.' 

It was my heart, that like a sea, 

Within my breast beat ceaselessly ; 

But, like the waves along the shore, 

It said : ' dream on/ and ' dream no more/ " 



FULFILLMENT OF FUNCTIONS. 

" Every man in his right place/' 



An old Eastern proverb says, " Doing one's own 
duty badly is better than doing another's well." Old 
indeed are the laws of personal function ; older than 
systems of legislation or systems of faith ; deeper too, 
and stronger than our desires ; whatever a man shall 
do, they shall make or mar forever. The intelligent 
fulfillment of them is personal culture. And all neg- 
lect or contempt of their conditions is failure and 
waste. We shall not overstate if we say that the 
proper business of a community is to get the rule 
of 44 every one to his own work " comprehended, ac- 
cepted, revered, by each person for himself and by 
all for each. Political liberty supersedes caste, oli- 
garchy, aristocracy, every forced or mechanical sys- 
tem of functions, simply in order to open the grand 
paths of natural function. So that the prime test of 
our liberty is whether it is educating us into the finer 
loyalty of earnestly seeking to know and do what we 
can do best, according to others the right of doing 
what they are more competent than we for doing 
well. 

The question of practical moment is the bearing 
of an intense competition and consolidation on this 
indispensable loyalty. It is little to say that these 
elements fail of advancing it. They cannot even give 
it a hearing. The self-pushing and crowded genera- 



FULFILLMENT OF FUNCTIONS. 



241 



tion counts deference to its requisitions, on a man's 
own part, as no less than folly, and even as a sort 
of crime against himself. 

How treat a disease which infests politics, trade, 
manners, education, motives ; a disease, so confounded 
with the perceptions of real liberties, and so fostered 
by their natural stimulants, that it passes unperceived 
in the public circulation ; to touch it anywhere involv- 
ing a suspicion of treason to what a free people hold 
most dear, — the right to full and fair opportunity ? 

And all thoughtful men must confess the deplor- 
able fact that the strength of this corruption flows in 
the very currents of our indispensable institutions. 
In the family, the school, the ballot — heart, brain, 
and hand of our civilization — we most dangerously 
ignore or set aside the truth, that every one is doing 
what he can to suppress the better services of others 
who is attempting what conscience, gift, or training 
have not ordained for him to do. 

From time to time our public opinion awakes to a 
sense of peril on some political field from this insidi- 
ous taint, but we have not yet come seriously to ask 
ourselves what is the root principle of our culture, 
and what ought it to be. 

What the republic wants, with the free opportunity 
it seeks, is the sense of its own proper purpose. 

That is not education, public or private, which 
aims to level all functions, so as to suit all capacities 
and gratify all desires ; nor that which drags all alike 
to a common standard, regardless of the differences 
which nature has implanted in brains and bodies. 
Much or little as we may have accomplished of such 
manufacture of a human pattern to order, time surely 
brings our products to a higher test. 

16 



242 



FULFILLMENT OF FUNCTIONS. 



We educate when we awake a self-knowledge and 
self-command, competent to choose one's own func- 
tion wisely and honor every workman who proves 
him or her self to be in the right place and work. 
Culture will develop all the powers ; but the idea 
that all persons are to be made capable of whatever 
place or work may offer inducements to competition 
is not a true motive in culture. It is not merely the 
root of an excessive school mechanism and drill, that 
trains young people to an artificial uniformity and 
makes independent judgment and original effort im- 
possible ; it ignores the law of mutual deference and 
appreciation, the very law by which social relations 
are preserved. 

And, if a community drops that controlling prin- 
ciple, even in the name of equality, it will speedily 
find that nothing remains out of which equity, the 
only true equality, can be shaped. Unconditional 
expectations, the claim to have a lien by right on 
whatever place or work one may desire, is defiance of 
nature and suicide of power. There is no liberty, as 
there is no success, but in having the self-control to 
accept one's real limitations and conform to real con- 
ditions. " I have mastered music," said Beethoven, 
" by submitting to her immutable terms." " Thou 
shalt do what thou wilt," said Goethe, " if thou but 
wiliest to do only what thou canst." 

How wide the bearing of the simple fact that to 
meddle is to mar ! Is not " minding one's own busi- 
ness" the true code of justice, the music of social in- 
tercourse, the dignity of self-respect ; for every man 
or woman, content, efficiency, inspiration, salvation ? 
The task that is set by one's own self-knowledge, not 
by projectors or managers, and advances one's inmost 



FULFILLMENT OF FUNCTIONS. 



243 



being, adds to the sum of public valves so much 
sincerity, thoroughness, dignity, faith. " Wisdom," 
says the Apocrypha, "remaining in herself, and be- 
ing but one, can do all things," — all things which it 
is wise to do ; not all things that men choose, wisely 
or unwisely, to attempt doing. One man for all 
things is not wisdom ; it is the essence of the quack 
nostrum, and will turn all spheres in the land into 
quackery. 

Better than all our preventive preaching or our 
reformatory disciplines will it be to appreciate thor- 
oughly how much the need of being delivered out of 
miserable dilemmas, involved in unsuitable functions 
and positions, has to do with reconciling people to 
acts of fraud, injustice, impurity, and other forms of 
degradation and dishonor. Our corrective science 
wants a new inspiration in method and aims. Hith- 
erto vice has been dealt with on one hand by theo- 
logical dogmas, or self-protective instincts, or blind 
contemptuous reprobation ; and on the other, by edu- 
cational methods that assume unconditional right in 
every one to assume and manage any sphere or voca- 
tion of life. Now we must teach not only nobler mo- 
tives and sympathies, but clearer perception of the 
condition of human conduct. The social reformer 
rightly guards equal opportunity to all sexes, races, 
beliefs. But he must aim, behind all that, to make 
this inordinate self-assertion, pushing with blind 
greed for any or all functions, impossible. The soul 
that must be quickened under these ribs of social 
death is simply the desire, genuine and earnest, to 
know one's real aptitudes ; the desire to choose place 
and path according to just self-estimation. Can we 
not, we Americans, if we will, exclude crude conceits 



244 



FULFILLMENT OF FUNCTIONS. 



and boundless expectations from the atmosphere of 
culture by disciplines tending to self-knowledge and 
self-control ? Can we not help the young people to 
aim at finding their real opportunity in paths of 
genial impulse and pure productiveness, self respect 
and mutual respect? Stimulate to these, and our 
youth shall go before us, leading on the fine training 
for natural functions now so bitterly lacking. 

Geographical science, I observe, is convincing itself 
that the only path up into the great warm Polar Sea 
must lie in those equilibrating currents of the Atlantic 
and Pacific, which flow straight from equator to poles. 
Made wise all at once, like the courtiers, who saw 
how easily the egg could be made to stand on its end, 
we ask with open eyes, " Where else should it lie ? 
Why has not this plain Gulf Stream track been fol- 
lowed long ago, and many a brave life saved ? " So 
every youth has one path, only one, to the broad, 
free life beyond ices and storms that wreck so many 
bright and bold ventures, — to find and obey the 
genuine straightforward currents, wherein his con- 
science, faculty, and desire can flow as one. No wild, 
aimless pushing, but these natural lines of flow and 
warmth lead on to where the pole-star of his ideal 
life shall shine overhead, and the open sea of his 
proper love and duty expand around him. 

Never are our powers their real selves till they 
have found their true relations to life and labor. A 
vice is a weed, a flower out of place, a forced plant, a 
good seed in the dark, run to leaf and stem. Though 
conditions do not make character, yet character has 
its conditions ; and a high order of character comes of 
not being cheated of the self-estimating and self-di- 
recting energy, that insures finding one's fit place and 
work. 



FULFILLMENT OF FUNCTIONS. 



245 



If a tithe of the effort which is now spent on pre- 
determining the paths and positions of young peo- 
ple by social exclusiveness, by idolatry of fashion, by 
contempt of industry, or the selfishness that traffics 
away their future to gratify parental vanities, mak- 
ing Sodom of cities and barbarizing education, trade, 
and work, were turned to study of the laws of func- 
tion and limit, we should not wait long for the 
" sweeter manners, purer laws," for which we yearn ! 
The need goes back of theology or science. It should 
dictate methods in church, and school, and politics. 
Of religion and morality the very rectitude lies in 
truth of personal relation. The modesty, the noble 
shame at ignorant and crude intermeddling, the lei- 
sure from self-pushing to seek fit qualities in other 
men for recognition and honor, is as indispensable 
to citizenship as it is to civility ; and without it we 
may call ourselves what we will, we shall be but be- 
dizened barbarians, after all, our politics a scalping 
raid of painted savages, — Goths and Vandals in a 
new form ; yet without the robust force that so re- 
deemed those spendthrifts and filibusters, that they 
could purify an old civilization as all this self-indul- 
gence is demoralizing a new one. Through this din 
where all are speaking, and this rage where all are 
grasping, there rises a stifled cry, a pleading for es- 
cape from false and mistaken positions with their 
misery and waste and sin. All our luxury, scientific 
resource, enthusiasm for art and letters, all the pas- 
sion for mutual stimulation, all the magnetism of as- 
sociation, cannot cover the helplessness of multitudes, 
as of the naked or blind, before desires and ventures 
such as are foredoomed by the irresistible decree of 
nature to be fatal to genuineness and freedom, and 
to make life at best a failure and a fraud. 



246 



FULFILLMENT OF FUNCTIONS. 



So the brilliant civilization has its bitter fruits, 
and they remand us to the neglected law of true 
and fit relation. We may well rejoice in the penal- 
ties which enforce its claims in the most external 
and practical spheres. For this accord with func- 
tion, this truth of attitude and position, is, in fact, 
the secret of spiritual grace and growth. Win this 
and all is saved, — the harmony of man with nature, 
which is science, with progress, which is liberty. 

How full is nature of this symbolism of function 
and relation ! Does not where I stand make my con- 
ception of the ocean's level, the mountain's height ? 
Not mere vibrations of ether are light and color, but 
what the fine attitude and dividing angles of the eye 
change these vibrations into, as they strike its lenses ; 
taking on, let not our science forget, more wonderful 
changes still, according to the attitude and relation of 
the inivard eye, which the outward only reports, from 
the rude sense which sees a primrose as u a yellow 
primrose," and as " nothing more," to the painter 
Angelico's spiritual vision, that blended colors into 
pure heart-waves of sympathy, sacrifice, and prayer. 

What else is science trying to say now in its me- 
ridian when it pronounces specialization of functions 
the mark of advance in organic forms, and a crude 
performance of all functions by each part the sign 
of the lowest stages of life ? What are " natural 
selection " and " survival of the fittest," but the per- 
petual edict of right relation, — each to his own place 
and in his own hour, in the name of universal order ? 
Do we expect to change all this in its human forms 
by theories of unconditional equality, or systems of 
uniform drill ? 

In nature the moral element of free choice is lack- 



FULFILLMENT OF FUNCTIONS. 



247 



ing. But let us not deceive ourselves. No more 
than natural order is social or political order, a mere 
power of seizing and using a sphere or relations 
adroitly ; it is no mere science of management, no 
cunning aptitude, nor marvelous working force in 
certain lives, that makes functions productive or even 
safe. 

The root vice of our politics is an insane expecta- 
tion of getting the benefit of sharpness and smart- 
ness, without injury from any moral defects that are 
confessedly linked with them in personal character. 
Somehow it is hoped that in the available candidate 
the ordinary laws of ethical cause and effect will be 
reversed. But they are not reversed. Not even in 
politics can you get true service out of false hearts ; 
to-day's gain is but a lure to tenfold loss to-morrow. 
We cannot cozen nature with our false labels. She 
pays coin for coin only ; will take no insults, and 
punishes on, till we pay honest measure and drop 
our loaded dice. A hundred Credits Mobiliers are 
not so bad as the failure of faith in each other's 
virtue. 

No ! the saving leaven is a sentiment. It is re- 
spect for the right of each place to be filled by the 
best and for the best ends which restrains from in- 
trusion on the domain this rule would assign to an- 
other. It is a dread of abusing or perverting trusts ; 
an ardor to be genuine ourselves, and to find the 
rightly disciplined natures for whose guidance our so- 
cial orbits wait. 

The so-called practical politician and man of busi- 
ness shrugs his shoulders at this idealism. But what 
other starting-point of reform can he propose ? Must 
we not at least make a beginning ? Are ideal re- 



248 



FULFILLMENT OF FUNCTIONS. 



sponsibilities out of place for a people whose claim of 
practical rights is of the most ideal description ? Or 
do we expect to maintain the rights without fulfilling 
the duties that match them, soaring to the ether with- 
out the eagle's eyes and wings ? That is the suicide 
of liberty. That shrug of the practical shoulders 
confirms the charge we have made. The first radical 
steps of improvement are yet to be taken ; we do not 
even recognize that there can be any difference be- 
tween individuals as to the right to hold, or the ability 
to fill, any places they can succeed in obtaining. 

In the absence of such recognition of real distinc- 
tions, what must be the end of our consolidated ma- 
chinery of popular instruction? To what are tend- 
ing these common standards and rules for all, these 
common expectations and desires for all, enforced 
by increasing uniformity in methods of drill? To 
leave so little margin for the sense of distinctive 
tastes and faculties, so little space for the self-deter- 
mination of the ideal, for knowledge of real limits or 
real powers, and drown the sense of allegiance to that 
force which one really is, or may properly become, in 
a vague, unchartered, and unchastened desire of free 
ownership in all spheres, for each and all alike, — 
what subversion of culture it is ! Uniformity enough 
to lay the foundations for universal duties and ac- 
quirements is one thing, but uniformity become abso- 
lutism, all-penetrating and all-controlling, is another, 
and as much the peril of a free state as it is the power 
of a despotic one. As an illustration, observe the 
style of reading now almost universal in our schools, 
— that mechanical tone so fearfully and wonderfully 
made out of crude conformity and self-asserting final- 
ity, its totally depraved emphasis that hovers be- 



FULFILLMENT OF FUNCTIONS. 



249 



tween that of the auction-stand and that of the popular 
stage. Whence comes it, do you ask? It is no mere 
childish sing-song, but the native result of the false 
principle systematically enforced by reading in con- 
cert, and by other forms of mechanized drill, — that 
there is but one way of reading your sentence, from 
which no scholar shall dare to swerve. So if you 
hear one, you have heard all. You would think 
there was but one machine, instead of a hundred 
minds ; that the human spirit had but one string to 
play on in all these fresh harps, and that a cracked 
one ; that mind and feeling were out of place in the 
rendering of Tennyson or Shakespeare, and that a 
poet's melodies were meant for a drill-practice in bad 
delivery. I think it would surely drive the former 
of these out of his seven wits to hear his Bugle-Song 
read in concert as they read it in our city schools. 
Nowhere will one feel more painfully conscious that 
the grind of the hand-organ has become organic, I 
had almost said national, than in the public exhibi- 
tions of most of our schools. 

The school grades and competitive examinations 
drive all as nearly abreast as possible, rewarding the 
ready brain, punishing the slow one, giving to him 
who hath, taking from him who hath not what hope 
he hath; and all on the same false ground of one 
rule for all and one capability in all. We put the 
little ones through a common strife for the same dis- 
tinctions, treating one whom nature has foredoomed 
to fail as if he belonged on the same plane with one 
who is sure to succeed. Our monstrous school-houses 
are types of the uniformities of mechanism to which 
we are subjecting the mind, — huge barracks, where 
the juvenile battalions shall learn a military precision 



250 



FULFILLMENT OF FUNCTIONS. 



in their prescribed mental movements, suppress all 
peculiarities, and grow up in due awe of masses, num- 
bers, and organizations, that will still further master 
their individuality in the political field. 

I do not mean to be captious, nor to overlook the 
merits interwoven with the faults. These faults are 
incident to the great experiment of popular self-edu- 
cation. Mechanism and manufacture are applied to 
mind, as they are to matter, as the easiest and sim- 
plest way. We have as yet scarcely begun to ap- 
preciate the real meaning of this momentous work of 
providing fit means for doing well what cannot be 
left half done. We must make our interest in edu- 
cation threefold what it is ; count it of more moment 
than markets or churches to a people ; put a hun- 
dred dollars for ten, wise superintendents for igno- 
rant and contentious committees, more teachers with 
fewer pupils to each, and chosen for gifts too rare 
to be had without skillful search and due respect, 
not for aptness in drilling a hundred as one, but for 
the rarer insight and sympathy that knows how to 
bring out of one a nobler import than any heap of 
mere numbers can show. Our self-laudations over our 
educational system are premature. The wisest ex- 
perts know the schools to be in their infancy. What 
they want most is the moral inspiration to which all 
this mechanism closes the door ; a public sentiment 
appreciative of high personal qualities in teachers, 
and intent on finding and advancing them. I believe 
that when we have attained the spirit I speak of in 
our public and social life, its subtle stimulus will be 
found in the school also. 

But no school methods can supply the lack of man- 
hood and womanhood. Home-cultures lie behind the 



FULFILLMENT OF FUNCTIONS. 



251 



school system. The separate life of the family is the 
seed-ground of individual character ; and it is in our 
homes that the reform of our civilization must begin. 
Here again the indispensable thing is to break up the 
crude and couceited democracy now prevalent in them 
also. There must be recognition of the wise author- 
ity, that knows how to transfer itself over into the 
child's conscience, there becoming an inward freedom ; 
and practical illustration given him of mastery over 
the self-indulgence and love of display that infect 
him with a barbarian lust of appropriation. There 
must be more thought and conversation on such books 
and persons as will lead into some quiet sphere of 
ideal aim apart from the world ; more association of 
the ideal of gain with the sacrifice of lower desires, 
of truth with toil, and of success with the honest ful- 
fillment of its conditions ; so that the heaven of home 
shall not be expected without the steadfast love and 
patience that must win it, nor the honor and confi- 
dence of men without the faithful service that deserves 
them. There must be more culture of that insight 
into other people's gifts and claims which grows out 
of self-restraint and ripens into self-respect. 

These are the disciplines of a free people, their 
saviours from French destructiveness and Kussian 
inertia, from the dead-levels of democracy and au- 
tocracy ; they are the generators of original mind 
and noble sympathies, and of work that is fairly and 
finely done because it is wisely chosen and inwardly 
loved. 

I have criticised our school methods. I do not less 
appreciate the free schools in their principle, the 
broad foundation they aim to lay, in equal oppor- 
tunity and preparatory discipline, for the common 



252 



FULFILLMENT OF FUNCTIONS. 



tasks of citizens. Let us perfect them at the North, 
and stretch their net-work over the South. Let us 
fully secularize and emancipate them. But let us 
attend to a matter that lies behind everything else, 
which they ignore, — respect for that internal force, 
and personal function, without which all their teach- 
ing fails, and the grown-up youth goes forth to 
mischief, with the edge-tools of politics and trade, 
fencing with drawn knives over our heads, tinkering 
at our laws and liberties, as the mountebanks tamper 
with our senses and nerves. The want of this sen- 
timent in education makes the best part of school 
discipline itself drop out, like the bottom of a basket, 
just when it should come to use. The boy who 
shall do no slovenly work at the black-board is 
turned loose into politics and trade, with no higher 
ideal than " to the victors belong the spoils." But 
what else can be looked for, where no training is 
sought or demanded beyond the skill to seize the 
tools and reap the fruit of exploiting them ? " My 
freedom! " cries the impatient youth. Freedom for 
what ? For whom ? For powers that have never 
learned to attempt one wise, sure, or earnest step 
to find their proper work ? For the community, de- 
graded and impoverished by perversion of functions 
and trusts ? O Young America, not even for you is 
there freedom but in the use of powers in their 
proper place, and at work which they love and 
honor enough to do it after their best way. Popular 
liberty is yet to be earned. It will come when we 
protect ourselves against all work but such as this. 
It will come when we facilitate and insist on a 
proper training for all functions. It will come when 
we account official positions, not as prizes to be 



FULFILLMENT OF FUNCTIONS. 



253 



seized, but as outposts of peril for sleepless con- 
sciences to guard. It will corne when we make such 
estimate the alphabet of political culture. 

The American takes his oath to public opinion in 
the name of freedom. But public opinion is not free, 
so long as it does not say to egotist and charlatan, 
" Who gave you the right to do as you please with 
the common good, to set example of unscrupulous 
work, to poison public confidence and scuttle the 
State ? " Public opinion is not free so long as it in- 
cessantly claims every one for everything, and leaves 
itself no chance for finding thorough service in any 
pursuit. A general acquaintance with all public 
interests is of course indispensable to republican 
life. But there is no tyranny, after all, more 
terrible than the public opinion which forces all 
men into availability for all uses ; and when that 
comes to be the ruling motive in education, liberty 
of choice and sense of limit are at an end, and 
a wretched general cramming succeeds ; fidelity to 
special tasks is impossible ; in this enforced distrac- 
tion and dissipation, self-culture vanishes, and vain 
ambitions and wild expectations spring up like 
weeds in the wilderness. Public opinion will gener- 
ate liberty when it leaves margin for the personal- 
ity to choose and follow out its work. The freedom 
of public sentiment is in a certain delicate forecast, 
like telegraphic warnings on the railroad tracks, that 
can intimate, even to the best public servants, when 
they approach a false position or a new emergency 
unsuited to their gifts, — a danger in the way of 
almost every man, whatever his powers or his services. 
The great downfalls, or " recreancies," as we call 
them, are apt to result from some fresh turn of 



254 



FULFILLMENT OF FUNCTIONS. 



events, which suddenly puts men out of place. Then 
personal defects pass into forms of public detriment, 
and good men mourn a u lost leader." Such was 
Mr. Seward when the appeal from ideas to bayonets 
disqualified and smote him blind ; and the prophet 
of education and humanity, of Plymouth Rock ideas 
and Pacific-Coast progress and the "irrepressible 
conflict " of liberty, was found aimlessly shaking the 
conjurer's staff of his " ninety days' " illusion against 
the portentous revolt of barbarism against civiliza- 
tion. A strange power is this shifting of the scenes, 
that brings men into false positions. Often these 
are made by gusts of a less tangible kind. Even 
wise and noble persons seem, in the hands of their 
own physical fluctuations or personal moods, like 
figures in a magic lantern, which a touch throws out 
of focus, and into such shapes that we do not know 
them. As slight a touch will perhaps right them 
again, if they but tend of themselves to find and 
keep their true place. And we want the public 
power that stimulates men to nobleness by its appre- 
ciation, rather than frightens them into falsehood by 
its frown. 

But what shall be done with the tens of thousands 
who never had an idea of fitness for public functions, 
yet expect to fill them all ? What charity can cover 
the greed for place that has almost utterly disso- 
ciated place from duty in the public mind ? What 
shall defeat the incessant trick of masking selfish- 
ness in the purest liveries and best logic of the polit- 
ical hour ? Here is the voter's bewilderment. You 
doubt not, a moment, as to the side or the measure 
you should sustain. But how escape being used by 
the sharp hucksters of office, who infest the right side 



FULFILLMENT OF FUNCTIONS. 



255 



when it is the strong side, — fluent and plausible 
managers, who have reduced the mechanism of the 
caucus to an art ; who work the wires to force your 
support, seizing all gates, foreclosing choice, parcel- 
ing out penalties and spoils ? There is but one 
remedy, — resolutely to put into our education, from 
the cradle upwards, the idea that office is not a prize 
to be snatched for, but a function to be deposited 
with the best ; utterly to dissociate it from the notion 
of personal claims, and to substitute for the rage of 
rotation the principle of holding fast to official expe- 
rience and virtue. 

Above all, must individual culture be guarded 
from the tyranny of mere mass-power. Nothing 
compensates for the lack of that delicate tact of self- 
knowledge and self-respect, those fine, warning sig- 
nal-wires of the soul, which prevent men from push- 
ing in where every step must be a temptation, and 
every act a public mischief. To follow the star of 
one's real capacities with content and faith is the 
secret of freedom. This meets the problems of re- 
publican liberty, of labor reform, of equal opportunity 
for race and sex, of personal inspiration and success. 

If every one out of his place is a public mischief, 
every one cheated of his gift and its use is so much 
waste and leakage, and an impeachment of our civil- 
ization. God puts no more force into a community 
than there is need of. Laws of economy, higher 
than our statutes, sa} 7 , " Dare not suppress in man 
or woman one capacity to serve society, or one power 
of self-development, in whatever sphere of politics, 
trade, art, manners; but as you value the common 
security, content, progress, help him or her to find 
that, and to bring it out." Then equal opportunity 



256 



FULFILLMENT OF FUNCTIONS. 



follows, in all safe and healthy paths. What is the 
greatest fountain of demoralization ? Surely not ma- 
lignity, but aimlessness, bewilderment, want of such 
work as healthfully busies men because it is what 
they are made for, and what brings reward in the 
doing. 

Let us make all haste to learn this. It is not 
what one has had given him that helps him, but 
what he loves to do, and so can do well. Do we 
not see this every day ? Inheriting a fortune shall 
probably ruin a youth ; discovering an aptitude shall 
make him a man. Let him but find that which he 
can love better than his own ease, and his feet are 
at once on the track of honor, of power, of joy. He 
shall be an artist of the beautiful, or an opener of the 
paths of truth ; or his speech shall drop on men, and 
they shall wait for him as earth for the rain. He 
shall show how to rise elastic from defeat, and to 
walk with fate as with a friend. Find what fact of 
nature or form of art puts life into a child's fingers 
or feet, or makes his eye kindle, and you may dis- 
pense with much preaching and school drill, and 
many anxious thoughts. Clear the way for his love, 
and his function follows. Set him to do what he 
loves not, and water shall run up hill sooner than he 
shall stop running down. Find his faculty, and he 
shall play at his task, and distance machinery in the 
quality of his product, and wonder at the ease with 
which he masters obstacles and makes material tell. 
Who can estimate the faculty wasted, the conscience 
wrecked, in the hideous fetichism of modern dress ? 
But I think a woman of fashion will cast off baubles 
when she has set her heart on something real to be 
done with body and brain. Theologies have crazed 



FULFILLMENT OF FUNCTIONS. 



257 



men's brains with vain imaginations about the fu- 
ture. What superstitions have come of rushing 
blindly at the unknown ; making for the next life as 
the politicians for offices ; laying hold on it with fac- 
ulties of sense and logic that are and must be wholly 
out of place, and crude and fear-bound at that ! The 
superstitions about another life will vanish as we 
come fully into true relations with this life, and put 
gifts to sane and noble uses here. 

What are health and spirits, clear eyes and strong, 
skillful hands, and elastic step, and mastery of sun- 
shine and storm, but the body, doing its own work fitly 
in every part ? I wish we may all have the clear- 
est conviction that there is no health for the inward 
man or woman but upon like conditions. Did we 
but dare to be neither more, nor less, nor any other 
than what by nature we can truly and honorably be ! 
I suggest a prayer not put up in the churches : — 
May neither my own conceit nor the expectation of 
others seduce me into trying to show for what I 
have no proper power nor call to become. May I do 
my own part well, and be ashamed, not for the gift 
I lack, but for the gift I squander, since it is not 
my business to do all things, but to do what I can 
do without spoiling either my special force or my 
proper self-respect. May I feel bound to the wise 
friendship that hints to me when I am out of my 
place. And may I be true enough to know when 
the hint is just and should be taken. 

Have you not seen that there is something beyond 
thoroughness in work lovingly done ? That is the 
old primitive meaning of honesty. I can see it in a 
bit of carpentering as plainly as in a great poem. 
What is the secret of productive work, the true la- 

17 



258 



FULFILLMENT OF FUNCTIONS. 



bor-reform ? What forbids scrimping and double- 
dealing, and making the letter of contracts do ser- 
vice, instead of the spirit ? What have we seen 
lending refinement, magnanimity, noble outlay of 
time and strength on ill-paid work, in irresistible 
witness against the monstrous profits made by frauds 
on industry ? Simply the love of doing things as 
they ought to be done. This is civilization ; this is 
liberty, culture, progress, holiness. For the art of 
finding one's special function rests on a deeper art, 
which helps to the right fulfillment of many, — the 
art of pursuing true and right relations in every- 
thing ; the fruit of a clear moral sense, of blended 
modesty and insight, of an interior harmony, as yet 
most rare. 

Let us educate for this principle. Let us flood 
these torch-light politics, this pitchy trade, these py- 
rotechnic manners, with its simple, open day. Let us 
substitute it for the herded dependence and noisy 
Baal-worship that is called religion, and vindicate the 
name that is broader and more beautiful than Chris- 
tianity itself. For this is the prophecy in the strug- 
gling heart of humanity to-day. 

Let us cheer desponding ones, who complain that 
the world has for them no sphere and no demand, 
to seek in this free atmosphere the conditions of self- 
knowledge, — to obey the patient invitation of their 
own souls. 

" ' O dreary life/ we cry, ' 0 dreary life ! ' 
And still the generations of the birds 
Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds 
Serenely live while we are keeping strife 
With heaven's true purpose in us, as a knife 
Against which we may struggle ! . . . O thou God of old, 
Grant me some smaller grace than comes to these ! — 
But so much patience as a blade of grass 
Grows by, contented through the heat and cold." 



EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMAN. 



Victor Hugo, referring to the French and Ameri- 
can Revolutions, said, in his striking way, that as the 
eighteenth century emancipated man, so the work of 
the nineteenth would be the emancipation of woman. 
And there is a certain truth in this grand antithesis. 
But nature does not finish off her moral effects by 
piecemeal, nor perfect a part of humanity at a time. 
And it would be truer to say that the emancipation 
of man and woman goes on as one work. The eman- 
cipation of each can only come in and through that 
of the other. How can man have found his man- 
hood, while woman has not free play for woman- 
hood ? And in fact the new demand for the suffrage 
shows him to be subject to the moral and mental 
bondage involved in a false assumption, which of it- 
self alone hides the truth of the case. It is assumed 
that man, as exclusive possessor and distributer of 
the franchise, may grant or refuse the exercise of it 
according to his own judgment ; and to him these 
new claimants must make appeal. They have thus 
the burden of proving to his satisfaction a right 
which in the nature of things is really as good as his 
own. It is not creditable to us that the question of 
right should have to be discussed at all. The posi- 
tion is a false one, and it raises issues that are neither 



260 EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMAN. 



necessary nor productive of that mutual sympathy 
and respect which become the sexes. Here are 
started apparent differences of interest, and opposing 
lines of defence, merely by the fact that man assumes 
to be the final court of appeal on a question whose 
decision, upon his own democratic or republican the- 
ory, would belong as much to one sex as to the other. 
From these needless grounds of strife, he should 
hasten to relieve it, by abandoning that assumption. 
Then it will cease to be a claim for " woman's 
rights," and become what it naturally and properly 
is, a question as to what are woman's aptitudes and 
duties. 

Some women have abandoned petitions and gone to 
recording their votes at polls of their own. Why 
should they not ? If the votes are not counted, it is 
not their fault. Besides, the position of petitioners 
involves the additional wrong, that their claims are 
subjected to the political method of being granted or 
refused according to the numerical strength of the pe- 
tition. Woman is treated only as a whole ; and so 
those who do desire to vote must wait the indorsement 
of the majority of the sex. Individual right becomes 
sacrificed to the method of looking at each sex only 
as a whole, as having or not having rights as a whole. 
It is as if there were something inherently unbecom- 
ing in women's taking a part in government, which 
can only be removed by the conversion of the sex, as 
such, to the desire of voting. Surely this is to throw 
discredit on every individual claimant who is thus 
treated ; she is put on the defensive against the 
charge of forwardness, at the very moment when she 
should be heard with special respect, as exercising a 
function forever held sacred, — the choice of his rul- 



EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMAN. 261 



ers by the individual citizen. Now, all this harsh 
ordeal to which individual women are subjected, be- 
cause unsupported by the general voice of their sex, 
however it be excused or explained, goes on the sup- 
position that it is man's place to see to it that woman 
acts in this matter only as a whole, and to grant the 
ballot only on that condition. It is a false position, 
for which the actual voting list will find it a hard 
matter and a very ungracious one to render account. 
The true point for reflection is, not how many wo- 
men do not want the ballot, or how many do want 
it, but how long is one sex to vote itself the sole 
depositary of the right of personal representation 
in a government by the people, and of determin- 
ing the conditions on which individuals of the other 
sex shall be admitted to it. It may be true enough 
that the question of woman's best method of influence 
in politics is not so simple as many enthusiasts for 
her use of the ballot think it. But certainly it seems 
plain that these needless complexities, these causes 
of recrimination, these mischiefs of a false position, 
should cease. Pretensions of this kind do not be- 
come our civilization. The claim entered by even a 
few intelligent women should be enough to suggest 
to the voter that he has a duty to fulfill before he un- 
dertakes to advise the other sex on the subject of 
voting, or even to gratify the wishes, or protect the 
tastes, of the majority of women by his political ac- 
tion. Ought the appeals of Lucy Stone or another 
to be necessary to admonish him that while he keeps 
the word male in the clauses about the franchise, he 
is really settling beforehand a question which it is not 
his province to decide ? Whatever it may seem best 
or wisest for women to do as regards voting, it is 



262 EQUAL OPPOETUNITY FOR WOMAN. 

none the less unjust for him to exclude them by posi- 
tive law. I am far from saying that this word male 
intends the tyranny that once disgraced our statutes 
in the word white ; but not the less do I say that it 
records a false and unjust assumption, and should at 
once disappear. Then, and then only, can we begin 
fairly to understand what woman is to gain or to lose 
by entering this new field of labor and competition. 
At present one word to her can put us right. " You 
shall not ask me for the privilege of voting. The 
ballot is not mine to give. It is yours to take." 
The claims for equal suffrage are neither the proj- 
ect of certain dissatisfied persons, nor an agitation 
worked up by theorists against the natural order of 
things. They are neither a mere "movement" nor a 
predetermined plan. They come in the track of our 
civilization. The demand is not to be judged by the 
spirit, the methods, nor even the character of its act- 
ual advocates alone ; it has a value beyond the best 
they can say for it, and it will be vain to rebut their 
arguments. For what it really claims is beyond con- 
futing ; it is involved in all rational conversation and 
all mutual responsibility. We shall mistake it al- 
together if we think it merely part of the push for 
universal suffrage. It is involved in the very idea of 
equal opportunity. This path must open to woman 
simply because all paths must open to mind and will, 
on like terms for all. Faculty ! faculty ! The whole 
age is a magnet that draws it forth. Suppression is 
pain and wrong. The future summons every re- 
source. It is superficial to dwell on charges of bad 
taste and imitation of male habits. A few women 
are not moving for certain positions and powers. 
What moves these agitators is moving us all. What 



EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMAN. 263 

if it does seem easy of belief to most people of both 
sexes that men are made for managing affairs of 
state, and that women are not ? Does that make it 
less true that refusing equal opportunity, in its full 
length and breadth, is to reject the very faith which 
every step of our social progress confesses to be true ? 
Already the wrongs and rights of labor and the 
needs of employment are so plain that prejudice 
makes but feeble stand against women who reso- 
lutely undertake any new form of trade or profes- 
sion. Outbreaks of opposition tell for their cause at 
once, and prove it irresistible. Educational oppor- 
tunity is rapidly advancing ; college-training for wo- 
men will not be long to seek in any part of our coun- 
try. Universities are springing up, especially at the 
West, where the sexes have the same opportunities. 
In the most enlightened parts of the Union but few 
changes remain to be made in the laws of property to 
secure equality of the sexes in the possession and dis- 
posal of it. Why should the hinges of the political 
gates grate hard ? Even if there are reasons that ex- 
plain this reluctance not discreditably, if both sexes 
agree that woman's organization better fits her for 
other than political methods and functions, what 
would this signify, except that it is precisely this 
point at which fair opportunity for the individual 
should be especially guarded, since here it would be 
most likely to be lost sight of in the general distaste 
for its exercise ? Arguments from taste, from chival- 
rous protection, from fear lest woman's peculiar func- 
tions should receive detriment, are as irrelevant here 
as in the question of freedom to labor. They do not 
touch the right to opportunity at all. When women 
have misused this right, it will be time enough to in- 



264 



EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMAN. 



terfere for the protection of womanly functions ; and 
in this true conservatism their own sex, as most inter- 
ested, will assuredly be found quite as quick and sen- 
sitive as the other. Certainly to presume inability 
before trial is an outrage. One sex cannot determine 
this question for the other. I am not discussing the 
question whether woman, as a sex, does not regard 
the present state of things as an exemption rather 
than an exclusion ; nor whether, in fact, to be outside 
of politics is not a vantage rather than a loss ; nor 
whether altering the political status of all women, 
because a few demand the change, is withdrawing 
from the sex itself a certain protection in the law for 
other functions of more moment to her than the bal- 
lot. These are simply questions that point to future 
arrangements in the matter of voting, in which wo- 
man herself must have her free voice. But they do 
not touch the first duty of removing disabilities and 
abandoning that exclusive jurisdiction which has 
been hitherto assumed. The way to the duty of all 
will be clear only when all are free. Whatever the 
difficulties before us, the one thing to be remembered 
is that equal opportunity does not regard sex ; that 
liberty knows, like faith and charity, neither male 
nor female. Organic differences between the sexes 
may make it wiser on the whole for most women to 
take less active part in political movement than men. 
However this may be, it cannot be well that they 
should be forbidden one inch of the path that teaches 
political duty. Are wifehood, maternity, home, to 
suffer by this freedom? But how can these be 
rightly valued or used for their human uses so long 
as woman is barred out from practical experience of 
the public interests ? Do not all these functions of 



EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMAN. 265 

hers terminate in government, institutions, social re- 
lations ? Must not the insignificant political position 
of the wife, by exclusive laws which he has made, 
tell upon the political capacities of the husband ? 
Can his legislation be noble, while he cages himself 
within it, and her without it, lest her mind and heart 
should dream themselves fit to walk with him in 
those broad fields of service ? Is wifehood in this 
situation the help and strength it should be in the 
growth of public and private virtue ; in making social 
manhood and republican self-government ? Or how 
is it with the true ideal of maternity? There is a 
feminine element in every man, that is imparted at 
his birth; it should bring moral refinement and spir- 
itual power into his world of competitions, of appeals 
to numbers and strength. But its character depends 
on what the mother is, who implants it from her 
own life. Is it the true ideal of motherhood that this 
fine element in the child, that turns him away from 
the love of appealing to force, should come from her, 
as a spirit of weakness and self-distrust, shrinking 
from great public interests and responsibilities, sub- 
servient to petty passions and prescribed exclusions ? 
Is not a great sense of amplest opportunity necessary 
for the function of maternity, if we would not have 
the finer instincts of the generations learn to leave 
politics to the baser ones, and die away into senti- 
mental dreams of a virtue it dares not put into laws ? 
Or is it the ideal of home relations that the sphere 
from which all public virtue must spread should lack 
that freedom and breadth of intercourse on public 
affairs which only a common, direct, personal interest 
can give, so that even the functions supposed to be 
peculiarly feminine cannot be fulfilled without, I do 



266 



EQUAL OPPOETUNITY FOR WOMAN. 



not say, every woman's voting, but without every 
woman's fair chance to join man in political action 
on equal terms, if she will ? There is not one high- 
way or by-path, in the realm of self-government, 
which man may tread, where woman must not have 
equal opportunity to stand beside him, if wifehood, 
maternity, or home culture is to become an intelli- 
gent and ennobling element in our civilization as a 
whole. 

Our civilization educates man by actual participa- 
tion in all these functions, which he is competent to 
learn and fulfill. Not for worlds would the American 
abandon his claim to this direct contact and practi- 
cal discipline. I think the power of the ballot as an 
element of culture is apt to be exaggerated, for the 
ballot appeals to the majority; and I hold that finer 
forces, counteractive of the coarseness of the appeal 
to mere numbers and mass, have always come, and 
are still to come, from outside of this special symbol 
of his democratic equality. But would not he regard 
his education as an insult and a farce, but for the 
admission the ballot gives him to handle every tool 
of that fine art of government to which it points ? 
Would his moral power gain by exclusion from it ? 
Is it to be supposed that woman can remain in the 
position of a looker-on in this great school of cul- 
tures? How she can best improve its spheres, or 
reach a fuller symmetry through its many-sided rela- 
tions, how she shall turn this political life which is 
now but a human hemisphere into a human world, 
from a half life to a whole life, is not yet possible to 
determine ; but to suppose she can remain indiffer- 
ent or hostile to the removal of restraints on her free- 
dom to do this is to imagine her the inferior half of 



EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMAN. 267 

creation that dead and dying creeds of the past have 
pronounced her. Can there be open access to litera- 
ture, science, conversation, social intercourse ; can 
steam and lightning, war and peace, can newspaper 
and school, carry home every throb of the world's 
life to every civilized household ; can every stir of its 
pain and its promise thrill society to its fibres' ends, 
and woman be content with the prescribed function of 
gazing at rule and misrule, the strife of right and 
wrong, the half life that wastes opportunity and bru- 
talizes power, content to gaze at these through gates 
she may not pass ? That she will generally use the 
ballot I do not affirm ; but that she will open the 
path to it, to be used as her sense of duty prescribes, 
is involved in the whole current of our civilization, 
and in the self-respect that secures her moral power 
in politics or out of it. It is through their sym- 
pathy with the best opportunities of the age that so 
many of the most enlightened and refined women of 
England and America are found advocates of equal 
suffrage. I do not say that it is to the discredit of 
others that they do not desire the ballot, that they 
feel their own chosen and ample work can be better 
fulfilled without the interference of this new func- 
tion ; but a just claim, bringing opportunity, culture, 
humanity, and lessons of the time to back it in the 
persons of the claimants, should none the less be ad- 
mitted. If the scruples and objections above men- 
tioned are really womanly, if the} r do point to a com- 
mon need of the sex and come from a high personal 
experience, they will infallibly command respect ; 
they will constitute a moral force which will surely 
make itself felt and tell upon those who are more 
eager for the excitement of political life than for 
their personal and private duties. 



268 



EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMAN. 



But, leaving aside the question of abstract and 
real right, it is asked, Did not woman substantially 
choose her present relations to politics ? Did they 
not grow out of her natural fitnesses, rather than 
come by the injustice of man? Is not this state of 
the law itself the record of her own desire to trans- 
fer or lease to him the charge of government? They 
who ask these questions will find them answered 
in the whole history of the old English common 
law, and the still older canon law, the statutes of 
the Church. In these, woman is practically and the- 
oretically a slave, merged in her husband, merged 
in the authority of a priesthood to which she is 
not admitted, even more utterly incapable than in 
the old law codes of the East. Paul and Moses 
alike remand her to subjection. The Roman law 
began the process of her emancipation from positive 
servitude to parents, husbands, and step by step it 
is moving on to perfection. Political disabilities, 
yet to be removed, are a part of this old status of 
subjection, originating in a variety of causes, but al- 
ways making the free expression of woman's real 
desire impossible. 

But then this also is not less to be noted, — that 
civilization has now brought the political power, in 
the most enlightened parts of this country at least, to 
the point of asking what her desire really is. It is not 
true that she is left out of political life from the pres- 
ent wish to do her injustice ; on the whole, the feel- 
ing, if it were analyzed, would be found to be rather 
that of defending her right of exemption, relieving 
her from tasks she does not desire. And just so soon 
as she indicates her pleasure to use the ballot she will 
have it. I have said I do not think polities should wait 



EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMAN. 269 

for this free expression ; the monopoly that stands in 
the way of it should not stand one hour. But it is 
none the less true to say even this : that among in- 
telligent men, at least, actual delay to wipe out the 
anomaly of the voting rule is not so much owing to 
a spirit of domination or contempt, as is too apt to be 
assumed, as it is to a respect for what woman has 
made of the functions she has hitherto filled, and the 
belief that she holds herself entitled to be left free to 
work through them alone. If it had not this pallia- 
tion, the present state of law would prove its makers 
fit for nothing but to be deprived of self-government 
altogether ; and we must look for the causes of this 
feeling in long - established traditional associations, 
into which inquiry has never till now been earnestly 
made. 

Thus there is a great deal of traditional acquies- 
cence in supposed inherent differences between the 
sexes, about which comparatively little is really 
known. Much of the talk about them is senti- 
mental and purely conventional, mere appeal to the 
prescribed limits of action which it has been held 
indecorum and sacrilege to attempt to pass. Male 
and female do not mean the same thing ; differ- 
ences in physical structure involve and imply psy- 
chological differences. But how shall the limits of 
these differences be determined, until full opportunity 
for culture is afforded ? It would, indeed, be equally 
wrong to affirm that we have no data as yet to go 
upon. Women have been tried in many fields of 
thought and work now mainly or exclusively limited 
to man. Indeed, there is scarcely one to which they 
have not found access, at one time or another, in 
Greece, in India, in modern France. Herodotus even 



270 EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMAN. 



tells us that in Egypt the man did house-work, and 
the woman managed business, and that the husband 
took a vow to obey his wife. Yet it is certain that 
partial trials, under imperfect civilization, have not 
greatly enlightened us as to the " inherent differ- 
ences " in question. For must not politics, business, 
finance, first be wisely apprehended, and got into 
something like right relations with universal uses, 
before anything like a true theory can be formed of 
woman's relations to them, or, for that matter, of 
man's, either ? Thus far, certainly, we cannot claim 
to have arrived at their ideal meaning. But let me 
call attention to one very significant admission. Sin- 
gularly enough, woman always held the place of pre- 
siding divinity in those parts of man's mythology 
which relate to intellect and politics. They who 
have refused to open the common paths of those 
spheres to women have filled their thrones with 
goddesses. Thus Saraswati, the wife of Brahma, is 
the Hindu deity of literature, science, and culture of 
every kind. Hebrew wisdom, representing a theo- 
cratic union of religion and politics, is personified as 
a female. Athena is the wise guardian of Greek 
liberty, queen of laws and justice. Minerva holds 
the same rank in Roman faith. Nuraa receives his 
laws from the nymph Egeria, and so on. As Hebrew 
tradition ascribed the fall of the race to a woman, so 
the Christian Church, with like one-sidedness, declares 
its sole saviour to be a man, though with a kingdom 
not of this world. But it has learned to do better 
justice to woman, at least in theory, than these dog- 
mas would properly imply. It has not failed to give 
the feminine form to all its personifications of Liberty, 
Justice, Law. It has inconsistently enough claimed 



EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMAN. 271 

the actual field and sway for man ; but the word for 
its ideal has always been not He, but She. Civiliza- 
tion stamps the head of woman on its coins as liberty, 
and lifts her form in marble on its temples of legisla- 
tion. Even the French Revolution, breaking away 
from every other tradition, held fast to this intuition, 
presentiment, or whatever it be, of mankind, and 
crowned, not a man, but a maid, as symbol of reason 
and of rule. Does he think coin and pedestal and 
symbolic homage are forever to satisfy living brains 
and hearts and hands? Is not the contrast between 
such confession and the actual laws which determine 
woman's share in government — the contrast between 
ideal and practice — enough to indicate that it is idle 
to talk of data for deciding what woman may or may 
not do in this sphere ? What shall we say of a 
sphere whose acknowledged presiding genius is not 
admitted to a voice in its regulations ! Is it not plain 
enough that many old formulas, still plied to satiety, 
about woman's nature and sphere, will by and by be 
regarded as those fine scribblings, over maps of the 
sky, that passed for astronomy before the discovery 
of the actual laws of celestial motion ? 

America, it is thought, yields positive knowledge 
at last. And platform and newspaper abound with 
new-fledged anatomists of the female mind. We are 
treated to the secrets of private experience blown out 
into general rules, to fulsome praise, and morbid con- 
tempt, or vulgar slander, in the name of Bible revela- 
tion. We are promised everything here, forewarned 
of everything there. We are reproached with shut- 
ting out angels ; we are charged not to open the doors 
to maniacs or fools. America will be wiser in all this 
matter when she has done her first duty, and opened 



272 



EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMAN. 



all spheres to woman with cordial welcome. At pres- 
ent the more thoughtful will modestly wait clearer 
light about woman's nature, and venture little in the 
way of theory. Generations bearing down the fruits 
of equal culture are needed for the data we desire. 

Yet to doubt that history has brought out many of 
the special characteristics of either sex into clear light 
would be folly. Mr. Mill, with others, has called at- 
tention to the curious fact that it is precisely in those 
points where women have shown decided capacity 
that they have most prejudice to contend against. 
No one thinks of forbidding a woman to write poems 
or philosophies, to compose music, to paint, or to 
carve, while it is very certain there has never been 
a female Shakespeare, or Plato, or Beethoven, or 
Raphael, or Michael Angelo. Yet from the queen 
regents of the old Hindu states to those empresses 
of the East and the West, Zenobia and Victorina, 
who divided the world between them in the third 
century of the Christian era, and thence down to 
Elizabeth and Maria Theresa, woman has shown be- 
yond all question a capacity for government fully 
equal to that of man ; at least as large a proportion 
of queens have governed wisely as of kings ; and if 
queens have governed through the aid of male coun- 
selors, have not the wisest as well as the weakest 
kings followed counsels of women skillful in state- 
craft and fond of sway ? The skill now manifested 
by women in the organization and management of 
benevolent associations, from the great Sanitary Com- 
mission down, is nowise inferior to man's, and would 
be as natural a gift for political uses, though under 
different conditions that may not be found so favor- 
able to its higher qualities. Whether the directness 



EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMAN. 273 

of feminine perceptions is not the very thing needed 
to scatter the complexity, circumlocution, and red 
tape in which the political industry of man has in- 
volved affairs is yet to be seen. And certainly, if the 
special abilities of a whole sex have been hitherto ex- 
cluded from politics because they are moral abilities 
rather than what is called logical or practical, the 
time has now come when this cause alone should 
fling open the doors, and these moral powers be bid 
to enter in God's name and help us all they can. 

In America the masculine energies have sprung 
forth, at last, uncontrolled, with boundless desires 
and boundless resource. Man has thrown off the 
Old World compressions that served some good 
purposes of restraining discipline in his immature 
stages of progress. He has flung himself out upon 
the idea of freedom and the authority of human na- 
ture to follow its own developing laws and forces, 
and let all its best capacities be heard and obeyed. 
So far he has listened mainly to ambitions that, by 
his own admissions, exclude the feminine element ; 
and the present political world, wherein he seeks for 
faithful men as Abraham counted them up in Sodom, 
is the result. Intent on infinite ambitions that run 
out beyond the nearer duties, he has had no resort 
but to keep these swathed and inert with complex 
interests and methods, till his laws defy codification, 
and the plainest instincts of justice and humanity 
find them a thicket of delays. 

Will not woman help remedy this state of things, 
both by the greater intensity of her emotional na- 
ture, and by her concentration on what is nearest at 
hand ? How much, on the other hand, will a love of 
intrigue, at least quite equal to man's, counteract this 

18 



274 



EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMAN. 



turn for simpler and directer action ? And will not 
man's tolerance have to grow larger to offset her 
extreme religious susceptibility and zeal, and swift 
and summary dealing with the complex problems of 
practical freedom and duty, when it comes to take in 
hand the making of the laws ? All these and the like 
questions of action and reaction time only can an- 
swer. But if history has any record, it is that the 
finer moral and aesthetic forces in society have al- 
ways been measurable by the degree in which woman 
has been respected and set free to follow her own 
instincts of culture and use. And so it is to be hoped 
that, while the debate is going on as to whether wo- 
men desire to use the ballot, that question may be 
resolving itself into another, as the first consequence 
of the prospect of her desiring it, namely, whether 
the ballot itself is, in a moral aspect, what real civili- 
zation requires that it should be. The demand for 
equal suffrage is a reminder that the polls be fitted 
for the presence of the new-comer. Let those sta- 
bles, it says, be cleansed. Let mutual respect and 
the amenities of life have the floor there. Let the 
political press learn to cultivate decency and good 
manners, and to avoid personal slander and abuse. 
Let bear-gardens give way to conferences where the 
serious interests of the subject shall be reflected in 
the becoming conversation of those who shall discuss 
it. 

Here I touch on what I regard as the most impor- 
tant bearing of the subject of woman's suffrage upon 
the present and future. Leaving aside the unques- 
tionable injustice of her compulsory exclusion from 
the polls, it has always seemed to me that there was 
involved in her position outside of politics a certain 



EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMAN. 275 

independence of its party interests and crude passions, 
which gave peculiar play to her moral power, wher- 
ever she has chosen to exert it, in counteracting the 
worst features of our political system, — the brute 
force of mere majorities, the pushing and driving of 
men into masses, on one side or the other, under the 
sheer force of mass over personal conviction or will ; 
the contempt of minorities, the swamping of individ- 
ual conscience in immediate policy, the overwhelm- 
ing despotism of drill. All this mechanism of politics 
needed counterbalancing by moral forces not subject 
to its logic of necessity, nor its passion for success. 
There was always some sense of guardianship and 
relief in noting outside of it all the proofs which no 
thoughtful man could ignore, in this influence of the 
truest women, that the deepest and best power was 
after all personal, individual, not dependent on the 
roll-call or the fugleman, not driven in the harness 
by party alternatives, nor stained with enforced com- 
promise or the suspicion even of political ambition. 

In this point of view there was a vantage in woman's 
position as a non-voter, which was illustrated in her 
immense influence in holding the political world to a 
great duty in the whole Anti-Slavery struggle ; an in- 
fluence which I believe would have been greatly les- 
sened, had she acted from within the parties instead 
of from without them. And I am fully convinced 
that in a true republican State there will always be 
a necessity for such form of personal influence, ex- 
erted from a position, voluntarily assumed, of course, 
if not outside of political action altogether, yet out- 
side of all suspicion of pursuing or expectation of pos- 
sessing other opportunities of influence than those 
which are purely intellectual and moral. If now the 



276 



EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMAN. 



very force of civilization itself is compelling woman 
to leave this point of vantage ; if she whose purely- 
moral power has proved itself a great fountain of no- 
ble practical reform is to be transferred into spheres 
where a lower force has ruled, and the appeal to 
numbers is the sovereign law, I do not deny that 
this untried path has its difficulties and its apparent 
disadvantages. It has had its perils for man ; it will 
have them for woman, as real, if of a different kind. 
I think I am more impressed by the sense of a cer- 
tain loss the best women will incur in this direction 
than most of those with whom I converse about it. 
But these difficulties do not shake my faith in the 
leading of our civilization, in the clear demands of 
justice, in the compensations of these new sympathies 
and relations, in the opportunities of liberty thus 
opened to the citizen of either sex. Two of these 
opportunities especially interest me. One I have al- 
ready referred to. If woman enters politics, then 
politics cannot stay as they have been. Both their 
method and their purpose must change. For the 
new element cannot fail to bring with it much of 
that peculiar form of influence which it has hitherto 
exerted ; an influence altogether independent of ma- 
jorities, nowise compulsory, purely personal ; an in- 
fluence that has been wont to move men, and will 
not fail, in these new relations, to move them 
through their respect for other sanctions than those 
of either numbers or force. The immediate presence 
and action of women must constantly suggest this 
appeal from the tyranny of numbers to finer forces 
of persuasion and private judgment ; for it is by 
these alone that woman's organization fits her to gov- 
ern. 1 do not mean, of course, that I expect this 



* 



EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMAN. 277 

power to be always nobly used by individual women, 
who will differ, as men differ, in the quality of their 
political conduct ; but I believe that wherever the 
feminine element enters even as a right, exercised or 
not, its natural associations with influences more in- 
terior and noble than mere physical force and mate- 
rial energy must accompany it. So far, then, in the 
present state of political life, it must be helpful and 
humanizing. Not war, not intemperance, nor penal 
methods will show this special good influence from 
woman so much as the whole prevailing theory of 
politics, as a mere way of appealing to men in the 
mass. It is to be considered, too, that this peculiar 
aptitude and destination, as it were, to influence 
through personal and interior forces, rather than 
through outward combinations and masses, is not a 
thing to be put away by the new claims of the ballot. 
The ardent zeal of advocates for equal suffrage may 
incline to disparage its right to keep women from the 
political field, but it will not be set aside. It is too 
deeply wrought into the structural individuality of 
the sex, whose central function, though by no means 
the only one, is motherhood. It inheres in the spir- 
itual guardianship, committed to her by nature, of 
sanctities which enforce a certain concentration on 
the inward life of sentiment, and demand a certain 
liberty to find shelter and privacy. Exceptions only 
prove the rule here. It will make itself respected. 
The natural reluctance of a large class of women to 
engage actively in political personalities, party ma- 
chinery, and competition for office will have to be 
respected. The devotion, of such as are already 
amply occupied, to domestic or other cares that in- 
terest and satisfy them will have to be respected. 



278 



EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMAN. 



The zeal aforesaid will accomplish nothing by taunt- 
ing this devotion with obtuseness and indifference to 
public duty. Rights like these will be maintained 
against the reactions of politics and the drum-beat of 
special agitators. The right of not being interfered 
with by the claims of the party canvass, of standing 
outside of the personal strifes that great public ques- 
tions concentrate at the polls, will have to be re- 
spected in the new class of voters, as they never have 
been in the other sex. A degree of personal liberty, 
in respect of choosing or not choosing political action 
at special occasions, will thus find admission to the 
political world, which has hitherto treated such inde- 
pendence with contempt, and branded it as the un- 
pardonable sin in politics, from whatever motive it 
has been assumed. Thus when voters cannot be 
dragooned to the polls to vote for the lesser of two 
evils, for the one or the other of two unprincipled 
candidates, a better day will dawn on political mo- 
rality. In the independence, then, which woman's 
natural liberties will bring into these spheres, I look 
for an abatement of the prevailing idolatry of the 
ballot ; the better understanding that it is not the 
end, but the means to an end beyond itself, in great 
moralities that alone justify the use of it. I hope 
it will open the way for suggesting higher sanctions 
and standards of political justice than the will of ma- 
jorities, or even the will of the people ; that it will 
help lift into view not only the rights of minorities, 
which the worship of numbers slurs, but the sacred- 
ness of personal conviction, — the first duty of each 
to obey that, whether he can make a show of hands 
for it, or must stand alone for it against all parties. 
In a word, I hope help will come hereby towards dis- 



EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMAN. 279 

covering the true practical foundations of the State ; 
light on the great problem, as yet unsolved, with all 
our pretense of a perfect theory of liberty how to get 
at the expression of the highest moral sense that ex- 
ists in the community, the idea^^es^ to help and to 
guide, and to get that embodied in institutions and 
laws. And what division of labor, what speciality 
of function, are yet to be found conducive to this end, 
only such freedom can reveal. In what I have here 
said, therefore, of the independence woman may as- 
sert, in relation to political action, I do not mean to 
treat lightly her coming opportunity for clearer in- 
sight into the public interests, and the larger fields 
of service that invite her. The value of enlarging 
the narrow spheres in which thousands of women 
move; of substituting great common ideas and aims 
for the petty intrigues, jealousies, rivalries about 
trifles, that consume their hearts and heads, simply 
because they have not that free open air of the gen- 
eral life which men are breathing all the time, it is 
not easy to overestimate. This is especially true of 
the passion for personal ornament and display — that 
barbarism of civilized life — that exhausts the purse 
as much as it annualizes the tastes, signalizing the 
commencement of its bondage, as the old Hebrew 
slaves did when they desired to remain slaves for life 
instead of going out at the year of jubilee, by having 
an awl run through the ear. 

How much nobler life is opening for woman in 
every direction, in opportunities to relieve the degra- 
dations and disqualifications with which female labor 
has been burdened ! Every woman who bravely en- 
ters a profession or trade, not hitherto recognized as 
feminine, and does herself credit, or who claims and 
wins the better wages hitherto refused her sex in any 



280 



EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMAN. 



form of work, is expanding the mental and moral life 
of her whole sex, down to its lowest forms of debase- 
ment, and every new step in legislation and humanity 
is a proof that her work is telling fast. Her political 
recognition will crown all other opportunities, not 
because it will make women vote, but because it will 
show that they are held equal members of the State 
with men, in all the forms of its universal life. It 
will give them that practical respect and furtherance 
in every individual effort and aspiration which the 
full right of citizenship carries with it. It will give 
politics itself a dignity and value in their sight, and 
reveal to them its real dependence on their intelli- 
gent interest and their moral power. It is for rea- 
sons like these that thoughtful women, looking along 
the coming track of our American destiny, have felt 
that the idea of equal suffrage deserves the welcome 
of their sex. Not because the ballot will be to them 
emancipation from oppressions, nor because there is 
any general wish or purpose to withhold their rights ; 
not because they cannot, outside of politics, move leg- 
islation to secure them everything their own votes 
would bring, nor in order that they may act in a 
body, as one sex, for their own interests, as distinct 
from the other, nor because women would necessarily 
act for their own interests and good any more than 
men have, through these years of slavery, war, and 
other wasteful and ruinous ways, acted for theirs ; 
but because it is essential for true culture that all 
paths of service should be open, without contempt, 
to every faculty to fill them ; because true good can 
only come through the practice of seZf-government, 
and true politics through a common interest in the 
common good. 



LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 1 



The Council of the " Workingmen's International 
Association," in their Defense of the Paris Commu- 
nists, define what they call " the true secret " of the 
world-wide movement which they represent. It sig- 
nifies, we learn, essentially " a working-class govern- 
ment, the product of the struggle of the producing 
against the appropriating class," — the function of 
which shall be " to transform the means of production, 
land, and capital, into the mere instruments of free, 
associated labor." And its authorized organs, while 
disclaiming for the present any intention of appeal- 
ing to violence, yet already announce the purpose, in 
Europe and America alike, to fct transform all land, 
forests, railroads, canals, telegraphs, quarries, and all 
great properties, such as manufactories, in favor of 
the State," which is to " work them for the benefit 
of every person engaged in producing ; " in other 
words, " for such as earn by the sweat of the brow." 2 

However startling for America, the substance of 
this " true secret " is familiar enough to French ex- 
perience ; being but a new phase of the "coercive 

1 Keprinted from The Radical for November, 1871. 

2 The Statement of Dr. Marx, its Secretary, is given in The New 
York Herald, of August 3, 1871. For a fuller account, see Mr. Hin- 
ton's valuable article in The Atlantic Monthly, for May, 1871, or Eich- 
hoff 's pamphlet, Die Internationale Arbeiterassociation, Berlin, 1868. 



282 



LABOR PAETIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



communism" of Babeuf, St. Simon, and Louis Blanc. 
It is to make short work with private liberties and 
responsibilities, and apply the forces of modern ma- 
terialism in constructing such an autocracy as the 
world has never seen. It would in fact substitute 
the State for the Person, and forcibly " transform " 
man, — not the poorest men only, as moneyed and 
titled monopoly must, but even worse, — man as 
such, every living soul, into a creature of legislation, 
a mere functionary and machine. Such a result 
would be none the less destructive, whatever the 
kind of legislation that had led to it. Here, how- 
ever, we have the absolutist legislation of a class. 

Let us do this Society justice. It denounces war ; 
demands education for all ; adopts a noble motto, — 
" No rights without duties, no duties without rights." 
It did good service to our Union in the war with 
slavery. It is, moreover, the natural recoil of their 
own enginery on the oppressing classes in Europe. 
The victim of " regulation " has but grasped the 
weapon which has proved so effective against him ; 
he will see now what it can do to make him, in his 
turn, the master. 

We fully recognize also the miseries of low-paid 
labor, that disgrace the most enlightened sections of 
our own country. We hear its cry of endless de- 
pendence and hopeless competition ; its demands that 
can no longer be suppressed or ignored. And there- 
fore we mean to enter our protest against a method 
of dealing with it that would, we believe, not only 
aggravate every industrial evil, but strike at the very 
substance of manhood. 

As its career is just opening in this country, this 
great organizing force will doubtless be hailed as 



LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 283 



promise of relief from their bitter burdens by thou- 
sands who can have but slight conception of its ten- 
dencies. Many programmes of labor reform, too, are 
drifting in the same direction, which have not yet 
reached its principle of absolute coercion. They con- 
tain elements already which forbid them to represent 
the real interests and rights of labor much better than 
feudalism or caste. They play into the very hands 
of monopoly, by following its example in putting 
oppressive burdens for free opportunity, and empty 
formulas for the laws of social science and the forces 
of civilization. The era of social justice will not be 
ushered in by those who have nothing better to urge 
than the old strife of classes for supremacy, and who 
make arrogant assumption of exclusive right to the 
honorable title of " working-men." It is in these 
points of view, which most deeply concern the liber- 
ties of labor itself, that I propose to criticise these 
methods of reform. 

We cannot, to use an expressive phrase, "go back 
on " civilization and reject the results of ages. The 
wrongs of the worst-paid workman are not to be 
righted by ignoring that breadth of meaning which 
the terms of the question have now fairly attained. 
To discuss rights and interests of " the laboring 
class," on the understanding that we are to exclude 
from the category of labor every form of industry 
but manual toil, is to ignore the whole sense of 
American civilization. Is it credible that a hu- 
mane and intelligent people should assume that the 
work of men's hands has an industrial value as such, 
beyond that which belongs to their intellectual and 
sympathetic activities? Will it define productive 
labor as work by the job, or by the day, and refuse 



284 



LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



the name to processes of invention that cost the men- 
tal wear of life-times, and even supply the motive 
forces of material civilization ? Will it consent to 
narrow its " laboring class," so that the term shall 
not include the professions whose toils minister, how- 
ever imperfectly, to constant demands of soul, body, 
and estate ; so that educators of the young and coun- 
selors of the old shall be set off as drones in the in- 
dustrial hive ? Are we to throw out of the list of 
" working-men " the philosopher, who explores moral 
and spiritual problems, and states the laws of intelli- 
gence, the economies that cannot be foregone ? Or 
the poet, who cheers the day with insight that brings 
health and sweetness to all thought and work? Or 
the artist, whether musician, painter, sculptor, or 
dramatist, whose embodiments of nature and feeling 
refine taste, and broaden sympathy, and concentrate 
the undefined aspirations of the age into living form 
and purpose ? Does labor exclude the scholar's func- 
tion, — to present man under different phases of re- 
ligion and culture, and enforce universality by tracing 
the movement of ideas and laws through the ages of 
his development ? Are we to reckon out the cares 
of maternity, the mutual offices of domestic life, social 
efficiencies, the subtle forces of character, the friend, 
the lover, the "fanatic," whose lonely dream pros- 
pects the track for coming generations ? Are we to 
count as outside of labor- contribution all work that 
reforms the vicious, relieves the helpless, or sets the 
poor in the way to self-help ? 

Stated thus, these questions may seem to answer 
themselves. Yet it is easy for parties to break away 
from principles that few of their members would 
theoretically deny. This will become at once evi- 



LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 285 



dent if we bring our test closer to what is now tech- 
nically called the labor question, and ask further, if 
labor is definable as that kind of service for which 
wages are paid, in distinction from that kind of ser- 
vice which consists in providing the fund out of which 
they are to be paid ; from that kind of service which 
plans and directs the operation, and bears the risk 
and responsibility ? In other words is labor as such 
so clearly distinguishable from capital in this sense, 
that the toils of mind as well as body involved in the 
application of the latter do not deserve to enter into 
our estimate of " the rights of labor " ? We must be 
very far from the track of science or freedom, if our 
definitions threaten to fall into such arbitrariness as 
this. 

Yet I cannot but note that the ordinary tone of 
labor-reform programmes and appeals, so far, involves 
the assumption that production consists in the direct 
creation of material values only. Values that can- 
not be measured, tabulated, invoiced, and made the 
basis of governmental direction are excluded at the 
very threshold. Yet every admission that purely in- 
tellectual or moral forces need not enter into esti- 
mates of productive industry is an admission that 
these forces have no claim to share in the wealth 
that results from production. To teach, as most 
philosophers of the new " positive " schools do, in one 
or another form, teach, that arithmetical and me- 
chanical values are the mainsprings of civilization, is 
simply to sow the seeds of barbarism in the fields of 
political economy. 

The sweat of honest thought and just self-disci- 
pline is, to say the least, quite as essential to the pres- 
ervation of that social order by which all industry 



286 LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



is maintained as that which, falls from the brow in 
earning the daily bread ; and for a citizen, whether 
rich or poor, to be ignorant or reckless of this truth 
proves him to be, so far, socially and politically a de- 
structive. It is therefore but the dictate of common 
prudence that every sign of a tendency to depreciate 
invisible production should be met at once, by all 
trades and professions as a source of demoralization 
to the whole body politic. Peace, order, credit, mu- 
tual help, are as truly the contribution of spiritual 
labor as the Order of Nature is a temple not made 
with hands. The spur that industry feels from the 
family and the home, — economy and thrift, all hon- 
est and handsome work, waste avoided, the bitter- 
ness of competition tempered, the conflict of interests 
counteracted by conscience and good-will, — these are 
all products of iribral and spiritual ideas subtly cir- 
culating in the atmosphere of the time. And these 
immeasurable sources of public good can only be 
guarded by a jealous loyalty, sensitive to every slur 
cast upon the value of non-material productive forces, 
whether in the name of capital or labor, of the rich, 
or of the poor. 

And in this spirit we must demand of those who 
rally for a 44 producing class," as against the rest of 
the community, where or how they will draw the line 
which justifies their use of this anti-republican name 
of 44 class." Every one is a producer in those re- 
spects in which he is a contributor to the public 
wealth, in the broadest sense of wealth, in whatever 
other respects he may fail to render service. How 
many men, women, children, are there in a country 
like ours who are not producers in this sense ? Whose 
work is of a kind so inconspicuous that you can afford 



LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



287 



to count it out? Even the child in a kindergarten 
school is a producer, in combining pretty colors, or 
constructing rude forms and figures that embody the 
first essays of that aesthetic sense which shall here- 
after make our artisans artists and all labor an edu- 
cation of the higher faculties. Every great thought 
and every good thought is a source of public wealth : 
helping to make true men or women, it helps to create 
and to save even material values, steadying the hands 
that move machinery, and fostering real cooperation. 
For one, I recognize no "laboring class" as distinct 
from the great body of producers in this largest sense, 
and hold it a pure delusion to suppose that our civili- 
zation affords any basis for forming one. There are 
rich laborers and poor laborers ; there are laborers 
whose wages do not supply their daily needs, and 
laborers who lay by something from their wages ; 
and from this, all the way on to those who put large 
capital to productive service, there is a continuous 
line of laboring men. No movement can really rep- 
resent the interests of labor which does not recognize 
the common interests of all these different human 
conditions. It is radically mischievous to make this 
a question between classes of persons. Labor is the 
grand creative energy of society, the wisdom whose 
voice is to all the sons and daughters of men, calling 
them to that steady application of all powers to right 
and helpful uses, which shall stamp each person's do- 
ing with productive value, and make it a common 
good. This universality alone can define the word, 
and the lofty claims must all pay allegiance to this. 

Amidst the confused battle-cries of labor parties 
organizing to put down " the appropriating class," 
the vital point of the problem secures, it is to be 



288 



LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



feared, but an imperfect hearing. There is surely 
nothing in mere labor, or production either, as such, 
that can claim our allegiance ; since labor may be for 
mischief, as that of over-speculation, which ruins a 
community by the most wearing and frenzied per- 
sonal toil ; and production may be of things destruc- 
tive, as the distiller's product when it swells into tide- 
waves of delirium and crime. Productive labor is not 
that which makes one man rich by making another 
poor ; robbing Peter to pay Paul adds nothing to the 
sum of wealth. But on the other hand, all labor 
which increases the means of well-being in the com- 
munity, whether in the material, social, intellectual, 
moral, aesthetic, or religious sphere, is productive la- 
bor, and deserves respect. The capitalist who con- 
tributes such increase, whatever the form of his 
capital may be, is a productive laborer, in every re- 
spectable sense ; and the laborer for wages who does 
the same thing is a productive capitalist in just the 
same sense with the other, — at once through the 
strength and skill which he applies, and through that 
which he may lay up to invest productively in the 
creation of a home, or a business, or in the education 
of his children, or in any other honest way of benefit 
to society, or of culture to himself. So that the first 
step towards justifying our American "honor to 
labor" is to recognize that God hath joined labor and 
capital, and that no man or party has authority to 
put them asunder, or to declare them foes. And the 
next is to recognize that what entitles labor to honor 
and authority, is not to be limited by any arbitrary 
definition of labor, since it is for all forms thereof 
essentially one and the same thing. So that the 
workman who helps produce an article of manufac- 



LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 289 



ture does not respect that which really deserves re- 
spect in his own productive work, unless he recog- 
nizes the similar claims on behalf not only of the 
capitalist in business, but of the teacher, the artist, 
the scientist, the poet, the moral reformer, the pro- 
ducer of any non-material value whatever. 

And the sum is that public or private movements 
are to be regarded as in the interest of labor in pro- 
portion to the breadth of their estimate of the ele- 
ments of individual and social well-being, and in that 
proportion only. 

I cannot believe that we shall make any progress 
towards solving the difficult problem of the relations 
of labor, until we start with appreciating those aims 
and motives in which every one, whatever his special 
work, is bound to share, and which constitute the com- 
mon cause. The intelligence needed for counteracting 
that terrible force of natural selection, that weeding 
out of the weak by the strong which holds as true of 
the world of trade as of the world of species, can 
never receive one genuine impulse, so long as this 
duty remains unrecognized. No body of men can be 
intellectually benefited by combination with a view 
to their isolated interests only ; it is but individu- 
alism intensified, a leaven of mental as well as social 
dissolution. They are educated in social functions 
only by that spirit and by that work which adds to 
the sum of mutual understanding and mutual help. 
The industrial wisdom we want most is that which 
understands how much more numerous and vital are 
the points of common interest which unite different 
forms of industry than those antagonisms, actual or 
supposed, upon which it is now sought to array their 
representatives in definitely hostile classes. It will 

19 



290 



LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



not improve either the morals or the sense of the 
laborer for wages, any more than it will right his 
wrongs, to inveigh against capital as such, while it is 
in fact capital which he is constantly drawing on in 
himself, and seeking to accumulate for himself, and 
applying, so far as he can obtain it, in investments 
which are wise or foolish, for the general good or 
harm, according to the character of his own private 
habits and tastes. It does not help his cause to be 
ignorant that capital injures him only in those in- 
stances in which it injures itself; that is, where an 
unfair use is made of greater capital to suppress the 
opportunities of less. 

And on the other hand it is equally mischievous 
for the capitalist, whose accumulated money fund 
gives him every advantage in the labor market over 
the man who has nothing to sell but his wasting 
muscles and his fleeting time, to be ignorant or re- 
gardless of the fact that his own capital is a part of 
the great labor fund of the community, and that its 
development depends wholly on the free development 
of labor in every form. It will not add to his se- 
curity to forget that he has no right to quarrel with 
such combinations as may be necessary for the pro- 
tection of wages-labor, except in so far as these are 
injurious to labor itself : that is, where they employ 
the power of combination to cripple men in the use 
of their own labor-capital, whether of muscles or of 
mind. 

I have hope in those reformers only who can 
teach us to emphasize our common interests ; to drop 
the old-world slogan, " Labor and Capital are natural 
enemies," and start with this watch- word to an age 
of brotherhood, " Labor and Capital are interdepend- 



LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



291 



ent forces in each and every personality, and consti- 
tute every one a natural guardian of their common 
cause." Let those meanings of the words have rule 
which point to culture and civilization. A problem 
so universal in its relations cannot dispense with 
ideal tests and standards, and hastens to enforce 
them upon all experiment. The key to every posi- 
tion is already found to be, not antagonism, but co- 
operation. No other chemistry has hitherto solved 
a single dilemma of the industrial world. There is 
a class, we are well aware, of whose utter weakness 
it would be pure mockery to bid them cooperate. 
And to make possible for these the leisure, the, 
education, the homes, the wages, that shall permit 
them to do so, is the instant duty of moneyed capital 
and manual labor alike. If they neglect it, both 
capital and labor will reap the whirlwind. But the 
common sense and good feeling which the freedom 
of our social relations makes easy for all, can open 
right paths at will. This is the genius to devise all 
requisite forms of partnership and mutual guarantee. 
But so long as this is foreclosed, there is no step in 
legislation, and no measure of compromise, that can 
escape subserving the ancient greed whose record is 
written in social demoralization and the misery of 
nations. 

Of all necessities involved in the problem of labor, 
there is none so practical, none so pressing, as this 
for which we plead. What shall we gain, so long as 
the appeals of labor reformers are made to motives 
which lie in the same moral plane with those which 
they denounce ; so long as they cover out of sight 
the essential fact that the pursuit of private or class 
interest alone is equally mischievous in every condi- 



292 LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



tion and form of work? By this spirit of rapacity 
all parties, however they may charge each other 
with the exclusive responsibility for the results of 
financial self-seeking, are equally liable to be tempted. 
The avaricious capitalist cripples the free develop- 
ment of capital. The hand workman who looks no 
further than the aggrandizement of his labor club or 
his aggressive policy, cripples the free development 
of labor. The most industrious men, conbining for 
clannish purposes, hasten to set up the very monop- 
oly they assail as the source of their own wrongs. 
Is it intolerable that speculators, combining to hoard 
and hold back the products of nature, should stim- 
ulate the prices of food till a great multitude are 
threatened with famine ? Where is the practical 
difference in motive or result when men associate 
for the purpose of artificially limiting the supply of 
labor by restricting the number of workmen ; depriv- 
ing the individual of his liberty to find education 
and employment in branches of industry wherein he 
might, but for such class interference, have taken his 
chance with his neighbors, and enforcing obedience 
to organized dictation, as the condition on which he 
shall be allowed to practice his honest calling and 
earn his daily bread ? Can labor resist oppression 
without the sphere of its control by oppression 
within it ? 

What right have a body of workmen, engaged in 
a special branch of industry, to assume themselves 
to be the supreme regulators of that branch, and to 
vote down the equal right of any man to engage in 
it, upon such terms as his honest effort can command? 
The very pretense of such authority threatens a so- 
cial slavery infinitely worse than any form of polit- 



LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 293 



ical absolutism yet known ; all the worse because it 
exploits the machinery of free institutions themselves 
to annihilate personal freedom. 

The one plausible ground for arbitrarily limiting 
liberty of access to the practice of a craft is the im- 
portance of disciplines which shall guarantee excel- 
lence in the product. But this desirable result is 
not to be accomplished, under modern institutions, 
by antagonizing labor and capital, nor by shutting 
out laborers for their refusal to combine in operations 
to secure larger profits for the whole. It demands 
the most cordial relations between capital and labor. 
It involves procuring every form of personal talent, 
by opening opportunities of culture and employment 
to all seekers. A high order of product is the bloom 
of a genial summer of cooperative industry. It has, 
moreover, its moral conditions, which no external 
arrangements can secure. It requires a different or- 
der of motives from those which find play in organ- 
izing labor parties or managing controversies with 
capital. It depends, after all that can be said and 
done, upon conscience ; upon the sense of a spiritual 
and aesthetic value in production ; upon just that 
thing in which, it is but commonplace to repeat, 
large capitalists and small capitalists generally, 
buyers and sellers of work, managers and operatives, 
are equally deficient, namely, the preference of qual- 
ity to quantity, of faithful to gainful methods ; upon 
the love of doing honest, thorough, handsome, ser- 
viceable work, in the firm conviction that this is 
what makes one a genuine laborer and producer, not 
the mere working a given number of hours, without 
regard to the character of the performance. This 
real respect for labor is the one great lack, amidst 



294 LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



all our manifestoes of its rights and ovations to its 
name. This, when it comes, will be true labor re- 
form, to be hailed with enthusiasm and faith. Its 
approach would be felt, first of all, in an awakening 
of shame and indignation at the base and ignorant 
work of all kinds which constantly wastes our re- 
sources with leakage that no man can measure, and 
demoralizes social relations with petty annoyances at 
every turn, while it slaughters life and sows disease 
on a portentous scale. 

Most of what is now called labor reform consists, 
in fact, whatever the theory, in the partisan manip- 
ulation of societies devoted to isolated interests and 
exclusive claims. It tends to embitter the antago- 
nism to capital with contempt for all rights of vested 
property, even for those returns which natural uses 
will command. The absence of feudal institutions 
might seem to secure America against socialist revo- 
lution, in Europe the natural reaction upon ages of 
organized wrongs. Yet this would be but a super- 
ficial view of the grounds of such revolution. Amer- 
ica has no Venddme Column to overturn, no palaces 
to fire, no priesthood to spoil and slay. But it is 
none the less true that there lies a perilous fascina- 
b „ tion for intensely democratic instincts in the theory 

that property has no rights which the majority may 
not abrogate at will. The authority of numbers, the 
worship of popular desire, is pushed to its extreme 
in the phase of republicanism through which sve are 
passing. The true industrial problem for our politics 
is not, how shall majorities prove the extent of their 
power, but how shall they learn to respect the prin- 
ciple that rights of labor and rights of property are 
mutual guarantees. But there is need of something 



LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 295 



more than zeal for equality and the "vox populi, 
vox Dei," to render a community the true guardian 
of this safeguard of individual freedom. Only as the 
lesson of a mature self-control, such as the Celt, for 
example, has hitherto even failed to conceive, can it 
realize the primal truth, that security of ownership 
is labor's indispensable motive power, and reckless 
violation of ownership its suicide. 

Respect for all real rights and uses of property is 
as truly the basis of free industry as contempt for 
all but its spurious ones is the basis of slavery. I 
know the logic that would repeal all private owner- 
ship in land in the name of mankind. But I know 
that such shift of title would also repeal the Family 
and the Home, which forever rest thereon. Nor is 
the practical repeal of ethical relations between men 
to be greatly desired. Yet the International Labor 
Congress last year, at Basel, representing the democ- 
racy of labor reform, not only indulged in denuncia- 
tions of landed property as such, but voted that 
society had the right, by decision of the majority, to 
abolish it altogether : mere rapine seriously proposed 
in the name of liberty. Proposals to abolish rent, 
interest, and the profits of capital generally, have 
been heard at similar meetings in this country. The 
crusade against rent, of which Proudhon was the 
great French apostle, meant for him an assault on 
the very principle of ownership. And what, in fact, 
do all measures of this latter kind substantially 
mean ? They would deprive property of the returns 
which it naturally yields its owners, when trans- 
ferred for a time in the shape of opportunities to 
other persons, instead of being expended upon pres- 
ent enjoyment. Rent and interest represent legit- 



296 LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



imate profits of capital, — being payment for accom- 
modations absolutely required for the production 
of fresh values. If they were abolished, not only 
would labor lose an important stimulus, but all mu- 
tual aid would necessarily be resolved into the form 
of outright gift ; so that the laborer would be stripped 
of his self-respect, having become a dependent on 
bounty for the supply of proper facilities in his avo- 
cation. And such demoralization would result that 
it would be necessary as a next step to abolish the 
benefaction, by denying the ownership claimed to 
reside in the giver. All private capital that would 
naturally find its uses as investment, or else as 
bounty, would thus have to be declared public prop- 
erty, and to be distributed where it is wanted, each 
needy applicant receiving a part of these confiscated 
surplus earnings of others, as if it were his own. 
How much earning there would be upon such ten- 
ures, or absence of tenure rather, and how much 
productive force, with this systematic spoliation in 
prospect or operation, it is easy to estimate. 

All communistic systems have involved Proudhon's 
premise, " Property is theft ; " some seeking to abolish 
it by free cooperation, others by coercive means, ap- 
i fc „ pealing to the State. As regards the latter class, by 

the way, two questions are pertinent. If property 
be theft, what must the State be in making itself 
sole proprietary? And who has ever constituted the 
joint body of producers, under the name of commu- 
nity, or whatever other name, prime owner of those 
laws and elements of nature which are the basis of 
all production ? Yet all anti-property movements 
are clearly associated with this belief in politico-in- 
dustrial absolutism, either as tending towards it, in- 



LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 297 



tentionally or not, or else as flowing by natural infer- 
ence from it. 

With us the theoretic rejection of property is rare. 
But the undermining of its natural rights and uses 
is among the practical results of a theory which al- 
ready inspires political organizations in the supposed 
interest of labor. I mean the theory that all per- 
sonal rights flow from popular will, and that full 
industrial justice can be extemporized and enforced 
in the name of the State. 

Note the radical vice of this theory. It ignores 
two essential facts. The first is that the public virtue 
which men can effect by outward regulation will not 
rise above the level of their own motive, and may 
fall far below it. And the second is that the great 
natural laws, which govern the complex relations of 
free men, cannot be made to run in predetermined 
grooves of policy. These laws must have the margin 
that becomes the vastness of their sphere, and the 
freedom of the individual minds and wills whose pro- 
cesses are their material. There are, of course, limits 
within which votes and laws for the regulation of the 
status of labor are effective and useful ; but it is easy 
to overstep these limits, and to trench upon those or- 
ganic natural methods which are larger and wiser 
than our plans. And when this is done, political 
manipulation and manoeuvre have a clear track for 
working the widest and deepest demoralization ; 
labor being at once the most private and the most 
public of spheres, feeding every spring of personal 
motive and universal good. 

Organized " labor reform " in America is rapidly 
assuming the aspect here indicated. It is becoming 5 
an unrestrained appeal to the forces of political com- 



298 LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



bin at ion ; an absolute faith in the all-sufficiency of 
programmes drawn up in the interest of a " laboring 
class," and enacted into laws, to settle every element 
of this most delicate and complex of problems. It 
seems to have no conception of the existence of any 
limits, either to what political autocracy, thus exer- 
cised, can accomplish, or to what the community may 
properly ask or expect it to accomplish. Thus the 
National Labor Party proposes that Congress should 
perform the function of " so regulating the interest on 
bonds and the value of currency as to effect an equi- 
table distribution of the products of labor between 
money or non-producing capital and productive in- 
dustry " ! An omnipotent Congress indeed, and om- 
niscient too, that shall effect a just division of the 
profits of industry and equitable relations in trade, 
by declaring from time to time, through some mys- 
terious divination of the public mind, that a piece of 
paper currency shall pass for so much in the market, 
or that government loans shall pay so much or so 
little to the lender ! What conception of the laws of 
human nature, or of its liberties, or of the sources of 
industrial inequalities and injustice, can men have, 
who expect such legislation, fluctuating, imperfect, 
itself dependent on party interests and the strongest 
forces in the market, to impose these vast results 
upon that whole complex of competitive passions and 
untraceable relations which we call the business 
world ? The same programme in which this stu- 
pendous regeneration is laid out as the work of Con- 
gress proposes that laws enacted for the purpose shall 
be executed through the wisdom of a " board of man- 
agement," to be selected, it would seem, by the " labor 
party " itself, when it shall have reached the political 



LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 299 



ascendency requisite for its aims. As a further result 
of these and other political measures, " all able-bodied 
intelligent persons " are to be caused to " contribute 
to the common stock, by fruitful industry, a sum 
equal to their own support ; " and legislation in gen- 
eral is to be " made to tend as far as possible to equi- 
table distribution of surplus products." To what 
extent the confiscation of such surplus of personal 
property by popular majorities shall be needed for 
the accomplishment of this last result is not yet in 
question. But the substance of the belief is this. A ' 
ready-made system of regulations, covering the whole 
field of industrial activity, can take up the motive 
forces of civilization in its hands, and shape them like 
potter's clay into an unknown equity, whose very de- 
termination, nevertheless, defies all our existing so- 
cial wisdom, and depends on a spirit of cooperation 
yet to be created and diffused ! 

The managers of the Eight-Hour Movement prom- 
ise yet greater things. The enactment of their pro- 
gramme is not only to effect the increase of wages 
and intelligence, needed to undermine the whole 
wages system, but will 44 secure such distribution of 
wealth that poverty shall finally become impossi- 
ble." 1 Such the miracles of legislation. It can de- 
cide the terms on which labor shall be bought and 
sold ; aboMsh competition among laborers ; set aside 
the working of demand and supply ! It shall even 
reconstruct human nature ; make it impossible for 
men to wrong or to be wronged, and free them from 
the natural penalties for indolence, thriftlessness, and 
vice ! Can the illusions of materialism further go ? 

1 Letter of Boston Eight-Hour League to the Working-Men of New 
York. 1871. 



300 LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



This dream of political autocracy especially busies 
itself with treating the currency as an independent ele- 
ment whose character is to be fixed, like everything 
else, by pure force of legislation. Settle by law what 
precise value this representative of all values shall 
represent, and are we not in a way to abolish at once 
the crime of being rich and the outrage of being 
poor ? If only our money medium would stand for 
just what we legislate it to be ! Not long since, labor 
reformers proposed what was called a "labor-cur- 
rency," to be substituted for gold and silver, as well 
as for bank-notes supposed to represent specie, be- 
cause incapable of being made like these, the material 
of monopoly and speculation. The circulating me- 
dium recognized in all the markets of the world was 
to be set aside for legal-tender " certificates of ser- 
vice," or " free money, based on commodities to be 
furnished anywhere at cost ; " as if such ambiguities 
of phrase and arbitrary processes could suggest any 
guarantee for a circulating medium, or such narrow 
theories of its representative value answer the de- 
mands of trade. What "commodities" may mean 
in the dialect of our labor parties it may be possible 
in some degree to imagine; but how should a cur- 
rency of commodity-notes, from free banks or else- 
where, help abolish monopoly and speculation ? The 
whole basis of the expectation must lie in assuming a 
superior virtue in the control of the circulating me- 
dium by a commodity-making class, in comparison 
with all owners of surplus means under the present 
forms of currency. Alas ! the real problem is a 
deeper one: how to free labor in all forms from the 
spirit of monopoly and over-speculation. It is but 
an aggravation of the general misery to invite us to 



LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



301 



escape these vices by assuming that the direct pro- 
ducer of material commodities alone is free from 
them, and that he has exclusive mission to expel 
them by political enactment from those whom he re- 
gards as outside of his class. 

The National Labor Programme follows up its,, 
very just demands for the prohibition of monopolies, 
with a call for enactments against u importing coolies 
or other servile labor." In the actual absence of 
any such importation, the meaning manifestly is that 
Chinese cheap labor should be excluded by law ; in 
other words, that a monopoly should at once be se- 
cured in behalf of native workmen as against this 
kind of immigration. And this proceeds upon the 
ground that men cannot sell their labor at a cheaper 
rate than labor parties dictate without being slaves, 
and that strangers should have no share in the oppor- 
tunity to learn by their own experience the American 
arts of raising wages and shortening times of labor. 
Similar measures against immigrant labor are being 
inaugurated by the English labor reformers, in defi- 
ance of their own long-cherished theories of free 
trade. When American legislation, we care not in 
whose interest, or at whose dictation, yields itself to 
this exclusive policy towards industrious immigrants, 
it will have proved false to the cosmopolitan faith 
which has hitherto distinguished us as the nation of 
nations, and built up our noblest traditions and hopes. 
Let the old world's experience of shutting out whole 
classes from the free competitions of labor suffice. 
And let us be duly watchful against admitting as 
representative of the real interests of productive in- 
dustry the efforts of special parties to subject its free 
movement to excessive governmental regulation, in 



302 LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



their own behalf. We have had warning of what 
may be done even in the name of the rights of labor, 
in the shameful disqualifications that have been im- 
posed upon the Chinese in California. One more 
illustration may suffice. 

In the whole scheme for enfranchising the working 
class proposed by the National Labor Congress there 
is not one syllable that breathes of encouraging wo- 
man in the free choice of occupation, or of securing 
equal pay to both sexes for equal service. This great 
social duty may well have been left out of the po- 
litical programme on account of its manifestly lying 
beyond the sphere of law, — though an amendment 
giving suffrage to women might deserve to have been 
mentioned as likely to facilitate the performance of 
it. Its absence from the Declaration of Principles 
also is good evidence how entirely the movement, as 
now pursued, is absorbed in the ambition for purely 
political management of the industrial interests of 
the country. 1 

Is absolutism organized by the State any better for 
labor than it is for religion? Yet even a republic 

1 Resolutions passed by a State Convention of the Labor Party, 
held at Framingham, Mass., while this article was in press, deserve 
notice as a local movement in behalf of the political and industrial 
rights of woman. The demand for these rights has reached a degree 
of recognition in this State, which enables it to command more or 
less respect from all political parties. But the facts relating to the 
National Labor Movement remain as above stated. There are many 
good elements in these Framingham resolutions ; but we are far from 
indorsing their extreme statement that labor, in their sense of the 
word, is " the creator of all wealth ; " or their internecine war on 
wages, involving, as it would, not only the overthrow of certain un- 
just or degrading conditions of labor service merely, but actual pro- 
hibition by law of that free determination in what form one shall 
sell his labor to others, which is the proper meaning of a contract for 
wages. 



LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 303 



may be drifting towards it. It is a grave error to 
forget the natural limits to the power of laws in de- 
termining the relations of industry. But it is a much 
graver error to give over the cause of labor to that 
kind of personal management by which political or- 
ganizations secure victory and spoils ; to get up a 
new political party to supplant existing ones, upon 
every issue that arises between the industrial ele- 
ments ; to expend the force that should be employed 
in cooperative movements upon the broadest basis of 1 
sympathy, in feeding political ambitions, substituting 
personalities for principles, and heaping the fuel of 
party bitterness upon every smouldering ember of 
discord in factory and shop. It is of course easy to 
demand indignantly, if labor is to be denied the com- 
mon right of political combination to make laws for 
its own protection. The answer is that the question 
is absurd. Labor is no abstract, distinct interest of 
this kind. It is the universal life — the people them- 
selves in their productive energy — and every time 
the people go to the ballot-box they express their 
will, more or less wisely, concerning its interests. 
This is the constant fact, this the whole meaning of 
American politics, and no believer in our institutions 
would think of disparaging it ; though they certainly 
come near to doing so, whose notions of " a laboring 
class" contract their definition of labor within arbi- 
trary limits. But this is what we do believe. The 
genuine appeal of labor to political action in a free 
community will be known by the people's speaking 
in some consentient and normal way, as having com- 
mon interests, of which it must not be supposed as a 
whole to be either ignorant or regardless. In other 
words, its great political bodies will include the great 



304 LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



mass of producers; are, indeed, mainly made up of 
such ; and, in the main, will naturally represent the 
people's instinctive good sense, as to what can and 
what cannot be accomplished for the right organiza- 
tion of labor by political methods. So that a party 
which has to be worked up outside and against them, 
yet on issues that cannot but have been familiar al- 
ready to these free voting masses, gives but slight 
promise of reporting the real demands of labor. An 
utterly impoverished and neglected class must indeed 
get its claims stated in whatever way is possible for it. 
But our labor-reform parties do not represent this 
advocacy of some distinctive stratum which politics 
has forgotten ; they are not pleading for a dumb, dis- 
franchised race, for slaves, shut out from all political 
hearing by national constitution and local law, — and 
certainly all labor claims but such as these can more 
readily get political recognition and power by inspir- 
ing the best among the great lines of public move- 
ment than by acting as the foe of all. But it must 
be said further of such parties as have been described, 
that their conditions fit them much less for real ser- 
vice to labor, as a whole, than for adding complica- 
tions of intrigue and strife. Believe as we may that 
the sway of capital over industrial machinery is grind- 
ing the workman into dust, your labor party must 
prove to us that its own passion for managing polit- 
ical machinery is serving him any better. It must 
tell us what good fruit is to be reaped by transform- 
ing the whole labor question into an open path for 
the reckless personalities and flatteries of the dema- 
gogue on his foray, — a vantage ground for working 
upon blind suspicions and desires, whether by crusad- 
ing against the public creditor and the owner of 



LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



305 



capital as public enemies, or by promising to make 
"poverty impossible" by laws enforcing high pay 
and short hours. 

The theory, for instance, of a gigantic combination 
of capital as such to oppress and enslave labor, be- 
comes in the hands of political management quite as 
gigantic a power for working up personal detraction 
and the misery of social distrust. Yet all the reck- 
less suppression of the weak by the strong inherent 
in business methods, and all the rapacity of incor- 
porated money power when fully recognized, fails to 
warrant the theory itself. As commonly put, it can- 
not be shown to be other than pure delusion. It 
would seem difficult to ignore more thoroughly the 
position which labor actually holds in our civilization 
than they do who are continually exploiting this 
theory. That there are indeed whole classes in its 
best centres requiring instant protection, personal, 
political, social, against unscrupulous systems and 
masters, should be plain enough to all : we advise 
every doubter of this to read without delay the facts 
and statistics brought out by the recent impressive 
Report of the Massachusetts Labor Bureau. But it 
is equally plain that laboring men as such are in this 
country neither discredited by custom, nor discour- 
aged by legal disqualification. Industry is in honor 
such as it never had in any land or age. There is 
not a township in New England that does not shine 
with tokens of its large rewards to farmer and me- 
chanic. A man has not less but more prestige for 
belonging to the people ; and to have been broadly 
educated, or to be very wealthy, is actually, other 
things being equal, a disadvantage in the race for 
public honors in comparison with having labored 
20 



306 LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



with the hands for daily bread. Labor systematic- 
ally oppressed in a country whither the poor of all 
nations are fleeing in flocks from the caste systems 
of the Old World ! Labor systematically victimized 
in a country where it has such perfect liberty of as- 
sociation and such success in self-protection as to have 
rendered all separation of it from capital, even in 
speech, a self - contradiction : where, as numerical 
force, it is itself public sentiment and court of ap- 
peal, and capable of prosperity in exact proportion 
to its own self-respect ! The industry of such a land 
is essentially one cause with social order and prog- 
ress, with morality and religion, with every instinct 
of humanity. And the labor movement that recog- 
nizes this breadth of function, not seeking the ag- 
grandizement of a special body, nor imitating the 
exclusiveness of feudal guilds, but clothing itself in 
large and free cooperation for the removal of all ob- 
stacles to honest self-support, in fact appeals to sym- 
pathies that move through all paths and conditions : 
it will find the common atmosphere of social life it- 
self at its command, as a freely conducting medium. 
How should capitalists plan or even hope to hinder 
the prosperous development of such a force ? It is 
impossible that its drawbacks should lie anywhere 
but in motive forces that operate in the mass of men, 
without regard to class or function. They are no 
more referable to capital as such than to labor as 
such. And all agitation is blind and wasteful till it 
is recognized that there is not and cannot be in these 
old free States to-day any general systematic attempt 
or hope to enslave labor as such ; that there is only 
the eager passion of men who have much for making 
more, and of men who have less to have as much as 



LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 307 



they ; that this, the unbridled rage in all spheres and 
occupations, is what now breeds, and what would 
breed, under the best organized scheme for control- 
ling capital any reformer can devise, whatever mis- 
eries now befall honest labor. This is the Ishmaelite, 
to whom capital and labor alike are free spoil, and 
who snaps his fingers at all laws and guarantees. 
He wars on no one class more than on another ; he 
simply pillages society in the right of the stronger. 
It is foolish to mistake this unchartered enemy for 
the intentional plot of a capitalist class against labor. 
The master who pays his workman the lowest pittance, 
or tries to control his vote by driving him out of em- 
ploy, has no special war against labor as such. Will 
he not starve out his fellow-capitalists as well, or 
swallow them up as readily as he does his workmen, 
when they stand in his way ? And as for those, on 
the other hand, who would have capital stripped of 
all opportunity and control, and brought under the 
rule of manual labor as the only productive force, and 
as entitled to all the fruits of production, — what 
would they too be likely to do with the rights of 
weaker laboring men, could they thus despoil prop- 
erty and wield its powers ? Their cry of " Down 
with capital " is the raving of men befooled by the 
very greed they charge all capital with, organizing 
for their destruction. What but mischief comes of 
blind choice and blind rejection, "Down with this,'' 
and " Up with that," impelled by the fiercest of des- 
pots that can sway manners and wield the liberties 
and laws ? 

The interests of labor can be advanced only by 
what is done in^the interest of the whole of society, 
and with fair estimation of all the elements of pro- 



308 LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



ductive movement. It is to be presumed that with 
the exception of those who live by speculating in 
fictitious values, or who live as mere drones by the 
toil of others, the only unproductive classes, — every- 
body is more or less sensitive to the status of labor, 
and feels, more or less consciously, the harm that be- 
falls every component force in the process of industry. 
No abuses in the supposed interest either of accumu- 
lated wealth or of manual labor can give just ground 
for disparaging the public uses that flow from both 
these elements. The broadest appreciation of uses 
alone can correct all abuse ; a reconciling spirit whose 
war is only against the common foe. 

Schemes, for instance, to drive large capitalists 
out of any fair field of employment for wealth, or ar- 
tificially to bar out labor that seeks that field, do not 
solve the problem of false proportion between the 
price of food and the price of labor. Our help must 
come from the science and the experience that can 
make it clear to all reasonable persons, how mischiev- 
ous to the whole community are railroad monopolies 
and food speculations, holding back products from 
their natural markets, enormously raising their cost to 
the consumer ; high tariffs that enhance the cost of 
production, and so diminish the market for the prod- 
uct ; large land grants to monopolists ; general over- 
trading, stimulated by the powers of machinery into 
such fluctuation of prices as to drive all profit from 
the channel of fair distribution, into that of self-pres- 
ervation in the competitive strife ; dishonest trading 
by stock or gold gamblers, in the hopes and fears 
of all classes ; and the want of cooperation among 
laborers to hold and work capital equitably, and to 
educate labor to a skill which shall command, as 



LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 309 



skilled labor always will, a high reward. And these 
real causes of the false relations between the prices 
of food and labor being duly recognized, the cure > 
comes in a common effort, wisely distinguishing what 
can come by legislation from what cannot, to remove 
them as foes to the common good ; not as if a labor- 
ing class only were ordained to get the benefit of the 
reform, nor with the aim to put down, or to despoil, 
any of those elements on which all depend. By 
this spirit, which we Relieve is destined to work its 
way to triumph, the scope of industrial reform will 
be widened to match the magnitude of the evils that 
now threaten us. It will tell alike on laborer and 
money-holder, in ethical as well as in political direc- 
tions. Its programmes will not stop in schemes for 
enforcing short hours and high wages for those who 
are already employed upon terms that give them 
vantage to demand better: they will look to the 
starvation wages of thousands of sewing-women, and 
the miserable pay of female labor generally ; to the 
friendlessness of young immigrants into cities where 
labor is uncertain and fluctuating ; to the threaten- 
ing increase of the sum of ignorance, intemperance, 
and squalid living. It will pursue and punish the 
reckless disregard of physiological laws which packs 
laborers into unventilated rooms or exhausts them 
in unhealthy forms of toil, or exposes them to per- 
ilous surroundings without such precautions against 
disaster as science can afford. It will bring to bear 
on the murderous dens of drunkenness and infamy 
that flourish under the assaults of law, the infinitely 
stronger batteries of labor as a public sentiment and 
a personal force of example and of aid. It will 
make war upon ignorance of physical and econom- 



310 LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



ical laws, upon loose, unhealthy, wasteful habits ; 
upon the unthrift that is the father of vice and the 
dupe of political jugglery. It will stop the shameless 
gains of tenement speculators by providing cheap 
and healthy lodging-houses for the poor, opening 
easy paths to the ownership of real estate. It will 
press everywhere the claims of home ; and facilitate 
in every way the taste for those domestic duties and 
interests that lead men to steady work and steady 
saving ; and propagate the ambition, not to break 
down capital as a fraud and a foe, but to possess it 
as the means of personal culture and public service. 
And in view of an unprecedented political corruption 
which no mere party changes can improve, it will 
insist on making office the permanent reward of 
worth and fitness instead of the carcass for unclean 
creatures to prey on, to the nation's undoing. It 
will understand that of all follies there can be none 
greater than that of intrusting the task to office- 
seekers who skillfully work up the public sense of 
official misconduct, loudly proclaiming their own all- 
sufficiency ; and whose sweeping assaults on the rep- 
resentatives of the people are of course mere con- 
tumely of the people themselves. For this is but to 
call on Scylla to save us from Charybdis. That well- 
meaning reformers should vote men into office whom 
they do not respect, in the belief that their abilities 
can thus be made available, and that policy alone 
will bind them to prefer the public good to schemes 
of private ambition, — is sheer trifling with the life 
of the State. How can there be any more public 
security than there is private virtue, known and 
trusted with affairs ? If you cannot find this, and 
must commit yourselves to the chances of politic 



LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 311 



good behavior from the opposite quality, it is a con- 
fession that all is lost. They who teach that the 
question of the motives and convictions of a candi- 
date is of small account compared with his probable 
uses for a particular end, because we are not to look 
for saints in politics, demoralize all who believe 
them, and deal death to those ideals on which our 
liberty depends. God may utilize all qualities. 
But is the political manager " a special providence " 
to save the nation, after he has taught it not to in- 
quire what men purpose, if they will but promise to 
execute its will ? 

The ideal aim of labor is to identify itself with 
every form of personal and public culture ; to repre- 
sent the fullness of productive life ; the brain and 
heart and arm of civilization. It is worse than time 
wasted to classify the friends and foes of this work 
by parties or programmes : the point of moment is 
the quality of individual life. Justice to labor is 
the finest of the fine arts ; the art of justice itself, 
and honor and love ; it is large appreciation and 
faithful performance ; the art of loyalty to the best 
and of service to the whole. It is the light that sees 
and the love that shares. What signify political 
combinations beyond the amount they contain of 
that true personality in men and women, which 
alone renders the social atmosphere fit for breathing? 
To what end will you concentrate rapacity and mul- 
tiply waters of bitterness ? It is no less than crime 
in labor reformers to promise their followers immense 
gains from laws and regulations about labor, while 
yet never daring to tell them plainly that there shall 
be no more relief to the poor in demanding and mak- 
ing such laws than what they themselves render pos- 



312 LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



sible by their contribution of qualities which political 
management or class ascendency cannot give. In 
the interest of the whole, let it be insisted that our 
republican watchword, " The dignity of labor," shall 
have rational meaning. And let us stand at the 
outset upon this conviction. Crass ignorance, exclu- 
siveness in rich or poor, democratic or aristocratic ; 
coarse and sensual habits ; the arts of demagogues, 
and that love of flattery and worship of noisy self- 
assumption which gives them following ; a blind an- 
tagonism to whatever commands special advantages 
in the competition for wealth, — all ways, in short, 
that unfit for appreciating a generous culture of the 
tastes and sympathies, and for respecting, even if 
one does not understand, the functions of art, sci- 
ence, religion, discredit one's cry for 44 honor to la- 
bor," and for " the rights of labor," and unfit him 
to stand as its champion or to advocate its cause. 

The large and free recognition of uses, visible and 
invisible, moral, intellectual, social, and on one level 
for both sexes and every race, is labor's true capital, 
and capital's real labor. Issue this currency far and 
wide ; it will not depreciate, like greenbacks, by in- 
crease ; it will not heap like gold in gambling and 
monopoly. Maintain this sole guarantee of personal 
freedom and culture, amidst the mechanism of con- 
solidation, which, without it, would suppress them 
altogether. Join hands, all parties, on this, the edu- 
cation of a free people to the spirit that civilizes, 
not barbarizes ; lifting the weak and blind with all 
the leverage of its united vision and strength, and 
calling forth every brain and hand to the self-sup- 
porting work that redeems and dignifies man. 

Let me say in closing that I hold free labor in 



LABOR PARTIES AND LABOR REFORM. 



313 



America to be the true emancipation of religion. 
It has nobler function than to subserve the blind de- 
structive reaction on all intuition and faith, against 
whose leadership the great soul of Mazzini was 
obliged to warn the labor reformers in his Young 
Italy. It means what America means, — not an 
enforced labor creed, but the integral culture of hu- 
manity. To honor constructive labor is to associate 
the normal exercise of every faculty with what de- 
serves highest honor ; in other words, with religion. 
And so religion becomes natural, human, unmonop- 
olized, secular. It teaches man no longer the old 
self-contempt as a gift by supernatural grafting, or 
miraculous interference, or by special mediatorial 
book, church, sect, seasons, forms that disparage life 
itself ; but self-respect as the voice of his familiar in- 
stincts, insights, energies, in the constancy of uni- 
versal law. What could effect such deliverance but 
free labor's endowment of the whole human capacity 
with a sacred purpose and authority ? " My Father 
worketh hitherto and I work," says the Jesus of 
John. That is very grand : nothing perhaps grander 
in the New Testament. But this is grander still, — 
for man to say, as man, as a people, as human fac- 
ulty in the broadest application, " God worketh and 
I work. " Make religion as broad, as practical, as 
natural as labor, and religion for the first time in 
history stands on universal principles, and humanity 
can become one with God. 



THE LAW OF THE BLESSED LIFE. 



Oke of the profoundest thinkers and noblest men 
of modern times, the German Fichte, has said, " Will 
to be what thou oughtest to be, what thou canst be, 
and what therefore thou wilt be : — this is the law of 
the Higher Morality as well as of the Blessed Life." 

Here is one of the immortal texts in that larger 
Bible of humanity, of which no race monopolizes the 
making, and whose canon is never closed. We will 
try to find to-day what it reports about the substance 
of character. 

Far down in the foundations, beyond dogmas, be- 
yond all methods and procedures of religious train- 
ing, lies the question of natural religion : "Have you 
resolved to be what you ought to be, what it is be- 
coming to be ? " 

i fc The beginning of all faith and of all ethics, — this 

alone is indispensable. We are not blindly to insist 
that all shall find the same spiritual path. One 
shall have his agonies and convulsions ; another 
shall grow by insensible renewals and perpetual new 
birth like the unfolding of a tender germ into a 
stately flower, or a broad-domed tree. We must 
recognize that Wisdom which treats the state of 
human character as aptly as Nature clothes the sen- 
sitive seed, but lays bare the tougher spore. But 



THE LAW OF THE BLESSED LIFE. 



315 



there is one universal necessity. Never in this world 
did life open into reality for any one till duty be- 
came commanding to the will. 

The preacher preaches on the fallacy of the max- 
im, "Act right and all will come right." "Not at 
all," says he. " It is all vain without faith in the 
atonement." But he does not show that character 
has any necessary connection with that faith, because 
he cannot. Is it not plain that a religion, which 
floods the land with its Bibles, tracts, magazines, 
conventions, and has its armies of professors, and yet 
has to acknowledge that living rightly is in no sense 
its prime condition of salvation, is lacking in some 
fundamental element of spiritual power ? Mani- 
festly. 

There is not a step in the popular processes of 
conversion and salvation which may not be got by, 
without once willing that, come what may, one will be 
what he ought to be, what it is becoming for him to 
be. The pure and simple principle of duty, as duty, 
has properly no place in the scheme. It contemptu- 
ously supplants natural religion, as if one might 
boast of cutting off his own legs and arms, that he 
might the better use wax wings tied on his shoulders. 

How often a truth seems commonplace just be^ 
cause it has not been looked in the face squarely, so 
as to be recognized, at all. It is the rarest thing to 
be simple and see directly into the heart of things. 
For the question with that popular process is, " What 
shall I do to be saved? " The command of the moral 
being is, " Will to be what thou oughtest to be." 
How vast the difference ! Personal interest there, 
impersonal reverence for duty here. While one is 
bent on what is called securing an interest in salva- 



316 



THE LAW OF THE BLESSED LIFE. 



tion, absolutely he does not as yet realize what the 
word duty means. He is still in the " beggarly 
elements." Duty means the essential allegiance of 
the man to his own proper integrity as in accord 
with the spiritual universe. What the consequence 
of following the right with loyalty may be, it may 
not know nor ask. " There is a sweet and holy 
blindness in its love, even as there is a blindness of 
life, yea, and of genius, in moments of productive 
energy." 

" Stern Lawgiver ! Yet thou dost wear 
The Godhead's most benignant grace ; 
Nor know we anything so fair 
As is the smile upon thy face ; 
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds ; 
And fragrance in thy footstep treads ; 
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; 
And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh 
and strong." 

To save their souls, men will grovel before a wrath 
that would destroy them ; perhaps they are doing 
what their condition prompts. But he who sets this 
up as the normal rule for spiritual growth, simply 
shuts out from men beforehand the living counte- 
nance of duty itself. One may abominate himself to 
the top of his doctrinal bent, but self-contempt shall 
be self-contempt still. Nothing shall come of him 
till he begins to respect himself, and the natural re- 
sources on which he is to draw for better living. 

If there can be no inspiration in the thought of 
the vileness, or impotence of one's nature, neither is 
the next step in the popular process of religious cul- 
ture, faith in a prescribed personal authority, a rec- 
ognition of duty. It abolishes the liberty on which, 
duty rests. " I will " has nothing to do with " thou 



THE LAW OF THE BLESSED LIFE. 



317 



shalt " ! To will means, distinctly and definitely, 
"not to be compelled," but to act voluntarily. Moral 
volition comes when one undertakes to be loyal to the 
law of spiritual being as the liberty of his own human 
being; when he looks beyond his own interests to 
what is right and fit in itself and therefore in him, — 
to what is presented to his free mind independently 
of prescribed plan or official authority, past or present. 
It is unworthy of a thoughtful mind to echo the old 
dictum, that Judaism is the law of bondage, and 
Christianity the gospel of liberty, though the latter 
may be a step to it. The gospel of liberty knows 
no prescribed name nor organized confession. 

The questions with which authoritative theology 
bids one occupy his mind are these two : 44 What 
shall I believe," and 44 What shall I do ? " The law 
of duty goes deeper and demands, 44 What ought I 
to be ? " 

The conscience involved in thinking about what 
one ought to do is rudimentary only: made the per- 
manent and supreme rule for life, it yields but the 
mole's eye, groping along from point to point with 
the sight which takes note where one is, what is 
about one, and what the business of motion properly 
is. It comes as near as we can get to the Darwinian 
idea of a moral sense, namely, an accumulation of 
judgments about phenomena. 

It is always busy with this or that particular obli- 
gation to-day, to-morrow, as the theological convert is 
busy in complying seriatim with the terms of salva- 
tion ; but what the true test of duty itself may be, 
what shall save one from making obligations out of 
points of taste, desire, interest, prejudice, fear, super- 
stition, — this wants, first of all, an eye for being, for 



318 



THE LAW OF THE BLESSED LIFE. 



the substance of character, not a zeal for doing. It 
wants a rounded organ of vision, wide open, looking 
straight at life as a whole. 

The items of conduct are ciphers. What a differ- 
ence it makes whether you run your ciphers on at 
the right of the unit or set them down without the 
unit ! The unit is being, character, personality. 
To have a thirst for what is real, that will not be 
satisfied with mere doing or appearing, and cares 
only for having the substance of life, in place of 
shadow and phantasm, — this is all that makes the 
busiest work tell. What are mere heaps of things 
done ? What is all this running, shouting, and ply- 
ing the hands up and down ? We are all the time 
doing; we all fill up time somehow, if it be only, 
as it often enough is, to tangle up the skein of our 
lives with the hurry of winding. But if we float 
on the mere stream of these details, even of what is 
called " doing good," we are mere running streams, 
not persons, at all. The fair bargains, civil behav- 
iors, the almsgivings, organized charities, essential 
parts of civilization itself, may, so far as concerns 
personal being, be mere mechanism in social machin- 
ery. What is called "*working Christianity" runs 
into this exaction of special demands, this mechanical 
multiplicity that crazes the brain, unfitting it for 
thinking clearly and freely, and corrupts the motive 
with its competitive statistics of doings ; measuring 
virtue by the yard-stick of popularity and numbers, 
enslaving character one way to carry its good ob- 
jects another, as your great fairs institute gambling 
to feed hungry mouths. 

One action that springs from the will to be what 
is becoming, is the descent of a higher life into this 



THE LAW OF THE BLESSED LIFE. 319 



mass of managing virtuosity ; our Adam stands 
among the dead stones and dumb creatures ; and with 
the birth of the Man, the world and what is therein 
begin to be named and judged, and to have their real 
estimates and uses. It is instantly revealed how 
much or little of this conformity and this mechanism 
in the details of conduct lacks the moral values. 

Shall we not say this ; — we get no true character 
till we have learned definitely to choose between be- 
ing and seeing, and to wait till time and the logic of 
events shall justify us in eyes which perhaps it is 
very hard to be misread by now ? We are surfeited 
with exhortations to Christian love as the condition 
of good repute, which lack the self-respect of heathen 
philosophy. " Dare not trip before yourself," says 
Montaigne. Plutarch tells us of a certain Roman, 
who put reality above reputation to that degree that 
when a workman offered for five talents to cover up 
certain parts of his house which lay exposed to the 
view of his neighbors, he answered, " I will give you 
ten to make my whole house so transparent that the 
whole city may see how I live." So there is recorded 
of the Spartans a law expressive of the same rever- 
ence for the rights of being over seeing, to the effect 
that, whenever a bad man offered a good piece of ad- 
vice in the Senate, a good man should be at once 
called on to take the discovery to himself and to pro- 
pose the motion. All men despise pretense in others, 
the attempt to pass for what one is not. Hear 
iEschylus's description of Amphiaraus, a Greek seer : 
" He wielded a fair orbed shield, yet without device 
thereon ; for he wished not to seem, but to be right- 
eous, reaping fruit from the deep furrow in his soul, 
from which sprout forth his divine counsels. Against 



320 



THE LAW OF THE BLESSED LIFE. 



this champion it were best to send only divine an- 
tagonists. A dread adversary is he who reveres the 
gods." 

Doing and being; what a difference between 
them ! And how little apprehended ! The old 
Hebrew history is repeated in the youth of to-day. 
Leviticus and Deuteronomy await him ; prescription 
in business, politics, education, religion; things to 
be done, rules for doing them. We have thrown off 
Old World lordships and respects, and everybody is 
after his rights and making his protest ; and yet our 
boasted equality is a domination by public desires, 
opinions, tendencies, fashions set by the drift of the 
masses and their leaders, practically as monarchical 
as Russia, as exacting as Leviticus. The Church has 
her panacea, which she calls " getting religion." In 
all this pharmacy of social drugs and specifics, the 
real gospel of free choice, the art of being what it is 
becoming to be, shall be hard enough to come at. 
Yet if this art be not found, one shall exhaust the 
commercial Leviticus, and the political Deuteronomy 
on top of that, and the religious canon beyond that, 
yes, the organized charities even, good as many of 
their intentions are, — and it shall all be to "fill 
his bosom with the east wind." Pour water into a 
sieve, plant sticks in a desert, sow chaff in the fur- 
rows of your plow, and as much will come of it, as 
from the poor dray-horse life of blind conformity to 
prescriptive tasks set your free citizen of Church and 
State by the managers of the hour. 

Even a child, while he must be subject to definite 
commands, deserves to have respect shown to the 
principles of moral self-government in him. He can 
be shown that the commands look beyond the mere 



THE LAW OF THE BLESSED LIFE. 



321 



act of obedience to some relation of his will to what 
it should honor and love ; in other words, to being, 
beyond the doing. Of every true parent the yearn- 
ing is, " 4 My child, give me thy heart ' ; I am not 
content you should merely do what I command ; I 
would have you wish for yourself to be what you 
ought, and let me help you to this." And if the 
child has a right to the earliest possible impression, 
that the life is in what we are, not in what we do or 
seem, has not the grown-up child need of the same 
thing as conviction ? 

He has before him continually the spectacle of suc- 
cessful shams and ill-bestowed offices and rewards ; 
honors for lip or hand services, however impurely, 
insincerely, sensationally done. 

" Is, then, the world," the youth asks, " anything 
more than an instrument for the cunning to play 
upon with these well-reputed functions and conform- 
ities? " Do not the free citizens clamor for sensation 
novels, newspaper, pulpit, gossip of personalities ; 
vote ideas a bore and thinking about principles puri- 
tanic ? Man is plainly on the stump in this age and 
country at least, vending his wares and begging for 
patronage. See how the mass winks at the ill-doings 
of each member, conscious of participating in the ig- 
noble arts it has to detect when they are past con- 
cealment. Is there any reward for scrupulous honor 
outside the delicate conscience itself ; and what does 
that pass for in public life, where it is taken for 
granted that services rendered the best cause look to 
office as pay? 

All this the youth of this land are taking note of. 
It is certainly not the whole of life, by any means ; 
but it is too palpably true, so far as it goes. It is 
21 



322 



THE LAW OF THE BLESSED LIFE. 



what will impress any one who is not armed with 
self-respect enough to contemn the policy of mere 
" success ; " and, if he lacks the finer sense, he may 
come to look up to the social habits and religious 
methods that minister to this state of things with the 
pride of a lackey in his livery. Let a young person, 
then, know how to be a fanatic at least in one thing, 
— his self-respect ! Let him be competent to stand 
so wholly upon what he is, rather than on what he is 
thought to be, that he is prepared to understand the 
Greek orator, Phocion's question, when he found the 
whole people applauding his speech : 44 Why, what 
then have I said that is wrong?" Let him appre- 
ciate Socrates' answer, when told that the people 
spoke ill of him : 44 Not at all, it is not of me they 
speak ; there is nothing of me in what they say." 
Let him be thoroughly persuaded that what is not 
real is really nothing ; and, careless of praises won 
by actions that minister to men's interests alone, live 
firm in the faith that, — true nobility is, 

" Not to scatter bread and gold, 

Goods and raiment bought and sold ; 
But to hold fast his simple sense, 
And speak the speech of innocence, 
And with hand, and body, and blood, 
To make his bosom-counsel good. 
For he that feeds men serveth few ; 
He serves all who dares be true." 

I. « Will to be what thou oughtest to be ! " Will ! 
Theology has much to say of the worthlessness of 
mere willing, at least in the first steps. Well, we all 
know that God must do it, if we mean by that name 
the moral and spiritual power that is working in 
every human faculty to ends beyond its sight or 
force. But it is we must do the willing, if our first 



THE LAW OF THE BLESSED LIFE. 



323 



steps are to be good for anything ; and that is itself 
the very way in which God acts in us. There is no 
self-mastery, till that same concentrated force of pur- 
pose or love of an ideal which man applies to what he 
most desires, is brought to bear on character. The 
same earnestness that makes the successful soldier, 
speculator, pioneer, makes the hero and the saint in 
this other sphere ; only it is turned another way, set 
on another key. What say the practical proverbs ? 
" The gods help those that help themselves." " Pray 
to fortune with your hands at work." "To breathe 
in the flute is not to play ; you must move your fin- 
gers." In short, the will is the man in action, as the 
soul is the unconscious deep of resource on which it 
is to draw. No growth, indeed, without these secret, 
often unimagined, unsought, resources, never yet 
sounded nor explored by man. But it is always the 
will that makes them operative for character. What 
have you done with your will ? What is it about ? 
That is the first question. So much money, so much 
skill, so much visible mastery, so much work-power 
and claim on others, it has achieved? Well, then, 
has it, or has it not, left the real personality to pine 
and starve ? 

II. " Will to be what thou oughtest to be." This 
is the inspiration, the motive power in character. 
"What thou canst be," — this is the measure that 
interprets duty; for all things of value are inter- 
preted by a measure, and limit is the ground condi- 
tion of all form, all order, all beauty, all freedom, all 
growth. What we ought to be is what we can be, 
not more nor less. Our opportunity determines it, 
and in respect of this, duty and development are one. 
If we speak of duty to God, we can properly mean 



324 



THE LAW OF THE BLESSED LIFE. 



nothing else than what we owe to our own moral, 
physical, intellectual, spiritual growth. Our Divine 
calls are just our faculties ; every one is a nearer 
" Way, Truth, Life," than any book or person. 

Our duty to mankind is the same ; for whatever is 
in us to be or do, has its function in society, and 
would not be in us if it were not needed there. That 
every one should have opportunity to be what he can 
be, and so fulfill his duty in its largest sense, is then 
the true end of social custom, law, manners. What- 
ever suppresses one aspiration for culture, weakens 
the power of duty, the inspiration of life, the freedom 
of religion which is liberty to be what we can be. 

If it shall seem to any that this is a truism which 
no one denies, I ask him to consider when there was 
ever a church, whose creed so defined the purpose of 
religion, — as the full development of human nature, 
in each and every one, in accordance with his capac- 
ities, and their relations with the Infinite of truth 
and good ? There was never a time when some hu- 
man force, in man or woman, for art, science, natural 
affection, physical culture, love of nature, free in- 
quiry, political self-government, practical humanity, 
or personal heroism, was not under the ban of the in- 
stituted religion ; did not have to wage battle with 
» it in the interest of mankind. It has taken eighteen 

hundred years of instituted Christianity, I will not 
say to bring out, since that is the work of many 
causes, but to permit a really universal form of re- 
ligion to appear ; and then a new continent was ne- 
cessary for the new races in order to justify man as 
against traditional churches of authority, to say to 
each of us, " Be and do the best that is in you. 
Your nature is not botch-work, nor deception, nor 



THE LAW OF THE BLESSED LIFE. 



325 



condemnation and curse, nor pitiful subservient 
creeping before a political catch-word or a popular 
name, nor aimless force. Leave not a talent buried ; 
waste none in flippancy; trample none out under 
animal hoofs. Be what you can be, not as function- 
ary, but as personal force in face of the facts of the 
world." 

" What thou canst be." This does not mean the 
impossible, nor the unlimited. It means growth ; not 
a fixed and final perfection to be reached ; not accom- 
plishment to-day or to-morrow ; rather a path where 
hindrance can be made help ; but where miracle, or 
interference with the conditions, would be fatal. Its 
law is, "Make the most of your actual foothold; let it 
bring out courage and enthusiasm." Its warning is 
not against limited spheres, but against complicated 
ones ; for the very secret of power is to know how 
much may be effected with the nearest materials. 
Power is in concentration ; weakness is in dissipa- 
tion, distraction of forces. As for doing, we are all 
strong enough to do something well; but none of us 
are strong enough to do all things well, nor yet, while 
reaching out over near opportunities neglected, to ful- 
fill what lie farther off. Wisdom is to know one's 
proper limits and conditions. " Nature," said Goethe 
finely, "can what she wills, because she wills what 
she can." " Be ye perfect," was the precept of a 
saint ; but it were no wise philosophy to make it 
mean, " be past improvement." Rather let it read, 
" whatever your means, hold them to be worth your 
best endeavor." If there is one thing we cannot get 
over nor put by, it is nature's question, " Have you 
complied with my conditions, accepted my disci- 
plines?" Genius has to do that. "Wisdom," says 



326 



THE LAW OF THE BLESSED LIFE. 



the Apocrypha, " at the first will walk with a man 
by crooked ways, and bring fear and dread upon 
him, and torment him with her discipline until she 
have tried him by her laws ; then will she return the 
straight way unto him and show him her secrets." 
There can be no demoralization worse than the self- 
indulgence that seeks great rewards without paying 
the honest price in sacrifices, disciplines, consecra- 
tions. 

So, then, " will to be what thou canst be " means 
" be what will make the best of your materials." 
They asked the painter Guido where he found mod- 
els for his grand human heads. The artist called in 
a porter who was passing by, and drew a copy of his 
bust, in which you could plainly discern the man, 
yet where every capacity was turned to highest ac- 
count. See what a queenly circle of rosy petals the 
sun knows how to draw from a clumsy, coarse cactus. 
Pare off the turf from under old, dead, dry castle 
walls, and choice seeds are found ready to blossom 
out. The artesian well proves that every spot in 
the desert has a possible oasis latent a few feet be- 
low the hot surface-sands. 44 There are conditions 
so sad," said Jean Paul Richter, " that there would 
seem to be no chance of lighting them ; as no rain- 
bow is possible where it rains over the whole sky." 
And yet every condition has its own ideal best. 
Common life passes the dreams of poets, let any one 
turn his thoughts in on the mysteries of his lot, its 
compensations, its unexpected, unpledged resources: 

" Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate, 
He knows you not, ye Heavenly Powers ! " 

What one cannot do, is often plain enough ; what 
he cannot be, is often also but too palpable. But, 



THE LAW OF THE BLESSED LIFE. 



327 



when all else fails, comes trust in the hidden rein- 
forcement behind the wits or the will. 

" See yon drifting bark is nearing, 

But, alas, the helmsman fails. 
Cheerily on, though, never fearing, 

Wind of heaven shall fill the sails. 
Summon all thy faith and daring; 

Heaven will pledge no helping hand. 
Trust some wondrous angel's bearing 

Thee to yon bright wonder-land." 

" Will to be what thou oughtest to be," and how to 
will " what thou canst be " will come plainer. One 
will put himself in the best opportunity ; seek the 
friendships that enforce him to be sincere with him- 
self and others ; and goad him to industry, courage, 
desire. He will not stagnate in his place. If it can- 
not serve his conscience, nor consist with his honor, 
he will straightway out of it, if he must feed on 
crusts. But the true way is to change place only by 
outgrowing it. Under that condition it is ten to one 
the place will match the man, and refuse to be out- 
grown. Wherever one is, the finest twigs and leaf- 
lets of work shall be filled out with honesty like 
that which Nature puts into the elms and pines that 
make the mountains solemn and the roads stately 
and fair. To be one's best self in whatever one does, 
— this is politics, and manners, and society, and re- 
ligion. If it is fit one should be where he is, it is fit 
that his whole self-respect should be there also. I 
suppose the test of self-respect is to dare confess 
one's limits. Stand for what you are and can do, 
and for nothing else ; there you shall be a king, else- 
where and otherwise, sooner or later, a poltroon. 
Great and little are in the man, not in the business. 
Where one has earned good understanding with the 



328 



THE LAW OF THE BLESSED LIFE. 



laws of his own conscience and capacity, there is his 
throne. 

To me the most astounding fact is the compara- 
tively small number of men who know how to con- 
ceive an abstract principle ; who know what you 
mean when you speak of duty as distinguished from 
duties, or of honor as distinguished from honors, or 
of right as distinguished from rights. I call the con- 
dition to which this tends, in any one, moral idiocy ; 
and, so long as a mind is in that condition, though 
it have the cunning to heap up millions, it is the 
mere rudiment of a mind, and less than the rudi- 
ment of a conscience. For all rational thought and 
high purpose depend on the sight and love of princi- 
ples. And when I say that the number of persons 
who are cultivating this perilous contempt of ab- 
stractions of principles apart from tangible facts and 
details is so enormous as to control public tastes and 
interests, I simply point to the moral mischief of 
an education which is coming more and more to teach 
a community not to think, but only to calculate and 
crave. So ebbs the divine tide of reason and culture 
to-day ; by and by, surely, there will be reaction, and 
the grander wave will come flooding in. 

III. 44 Will to be what thou oughtest to be," this is 
the inspiration of conduct. " What thou canst be," 
this is the measure. " What, therefore, thou wilt be," 
this is the guarantee. Confidence in the tendencies 
of life behind all the degeneracies, because these are 
under penalties that in the long run will make man 
conform to the right order ; and because, when you 
will to be what you ought and what you can, you are 
in the line of success, and may trust your spiritual eye 
as a sound and healthy organ which sees the world as 



THE LAW OF THE BLESSED LIFE. 



329 



it is, and points out to you what is worth seeking 
and having. The rock on which religion, morality, 
intelligence, stand is faith in the best, — a sense of 
affinity with it, of inherent inalienable unity with it, 
of its real being and indispensable necessity. What 
we need is to enlist in the service of the best pur- 
poses that class of sentiments which draw the lovers 
to their beloved, the artist to his ideal, the conqueror 
to his star, the wanderer to his home, — unchangea- 
ble affinity, natural attraction, pride in constancy to 
that for which we are made. Nothing but this will 
conquer temptation ; for this is master of the field 
before it conies, and orders it off by right of eminent 
domain. If there be a dream or a hope in you that 
makes life look richer and nobler, lay your hand in 
that, just as you would in the open hand of God. 
Seek those who neither mock nor distrust it. Be- 
lieve that others would seek it if they knew it as it 
is ; that they are, in blind ways, if in no other, grop- 
ing after it now. There is a lesson in the power of 
a fanatic to make others believe what is dear to him. 
But what no fanatic could do with you, this desired 
integrity, honor, purity, helpfulness, has done ; it has 
made you say, " This, which I ought to be, is what, 
therefore, I shall be. How should I recognize it to 
be becoming, if I were not made for it ? So true is 
the old Stoic maxim, 4 None can have thoughts of 
God, unless he were of the nature of God.' " 

I think a good man's hopes and dreams are like 
real objects seen far off on the road before you, grow- 
ing greater and clearer as the distance narrows. How 
true that the highest prophecy is but pale foregleam 
of what is to come ! Shakespeare saw fairy girdles 
laid swift as thought round the globe. Now thought 



330 THE LAW OF THE BLESSED LIFE. 

itself moves on such real girdles to make the uni- 
versal spirit of our age. In the old Buddhist my- 
thologies you read of ages of creation counted by the 
millions ; of worlds piled on worlds, past power of 
figures to express. Christian Bibliolatry had its long 
day of contempt for all this Pagan imagining. Now 
come geology and astronomy, with telescope, micro- 
scope, calculus, record of life and of rocks, to make 
the old vision more than good. In such fulfillments 
we recognize the spirit that dwells in history and 
makes man's life one continuous whole, — end con- 
tained in beginning, deep answering deep. But do 
we think moral prophecy less real ? As mythology 
said, 44 What ought to be is," so prophecy says, 
" What ought to be shall be." Buddha, Confucius, 
Moses, Jesus, trusted their dreams of social unity. 
Ages pass ; and now what applications, uses, mean- 
ings, come for those principles of theirs of which 
they could not have conceived, and of which what 
they did conceive found so little faith in their days ? 

Shall the universal law that guarantees such 
dreams of humanity have no assurance for personal 
ideals ? Have men no prerogative of progress be- 
yond the lower forms of life ? Nature does not guar- 
antee normal growth to every tree or bud. How 
many flowers perish before seed-time ! How much 
of nature remains but an intention ! But if man has 
not immortal years to grow in, it is a strange irra- 
tionality, at least, that a being who can see the values 
of life, who can be conscious of unused powers and 
possibilities, who can and does participate in princi- 
ples and truths over which death flits only like a 
passing cloud, and which it would seem amazing 
waste should suffer annihilation, — I say, it seems 



THE LAW OF THE BLESSED LIFE. 



331 



a piece of irrationality, at least, that such a force 
should have no part in this immortality which it sees 
and knows. And if we have an immortality to work 
in, what prophecy of personal growth need fail ? 

But suppose that cannot be proved. Is truth less 
true, is law less sovereign, is ideal right less the goal 
of human progress, because its fulfillment comes in 
the life of mankind, and not of individual men ? Still 
must we trust it, though we achieve only the power 
to trust, and love it ; whatever becomes of us, it is 
no less truth and right and law. But wisdom is 
justified of her children. Her disciplines are per- 
sonal achievement, are personal fulfillment. It is not 
for us to pray that the noble purpose shall bring the 
peace and power it needs. It is peace, it is power ; 
and there is no other success possible. Two things 
are of moment. Choose the path of honor. Choose 
the nearest, straightest path of honor. One may 
hold on to his choice, and yet follow it by winding 
paths, and pay heavy penalties for it ; for waste, 
leakage, break-downs, it shall cost what we choose to 
pay. Yet over all stands forever the handwriting of 
nature, — the word of God : " The right way is the 
blessed way." Will, then, to be what you ought ; 
and the tread of your feet on that track shall be 
lighter at once, and purer air and brighter sky shall 
greet you, guiding stars come nearer, events offer 
sympathy, hands reach for help. And every instant 
of fidelity and endeavor is health and growth and 

" The Future hides in it 

Good hap and sorrow ; 

We press still thorow, 
Naught that abides in it 
Daunting us, — onward. 



332 



THE LAW OF THE BLESSED LIFE. 



And solemn before us 
Veiled, the dark Portal, 
Goal of all mortal : — 
Stars silent rest o'er us, 
Graves under us silent. 

But heard are the voices, — 
Heard are the sages, 
The worlds and the ages : 
* Choose well, your choice is 

Brief and yet endless. 

Here eyes do regard you, 
In eternity's stillness ; 
Here is all fullness, 

Ye brave, to reward you ; 

Work, and despair not.' " 



1 ft, 



GAIN IN LOSS. 



Philosophy is generally supposed to deal in think- 
ing hard, rather than in living well. It is held to 
be a science not for the many, but for the few. 
Nothing is more common than to refer to it in a 
matter-of-course way, as far inferior to what is 
called a humble, unquestioning faith in accredited 
messenger or inspired book. I hold the exactly 
contrary view. I hold that a true religious philos- 
ophy, or philosophy of religion rather, is not only 
the need of every one who is not too great nor too 
little to be confronted by the facts of life, but that it 
is the vital essence of all strength to meet these 
facts. The " heathen" judged wisely when they gave 
the name to all moral and spiritual wisdom what- 
ever, and defined virtue as the practice of philoso- 
phy. How to grow by what would seem to defeat 
and dwarf us was the problem of the best ancient 
philosophy, — surely the noblest of problems ; and 
it was because thoughtful and earnest men really 
solved that problem in conduct as well as theory 
that they came to call philosophy the science of liv- 
ing as well as thinking right. And it is very clear 
to me, not only that men like Aurelius, Seneca, 
Plato, Epictetus, whose maxims have come down to 
us, full of strength and cheer, did personally get at 



334 



GAIN IN LOSS. 



those precepts by a noble experience, but also that 
they met their lot in quite as manly and successful a 
way as the best reputed Christians do. Are not the 
facts of life which thoughtful people have had to 
meet, to account for and make the best of, essen- 
tially the same in all times, under all religious 
names, or under no religious names? Life is life, 
the same laws and relations always ; and therefore 
there is always the same grand first necessity for 
faith in it and in them, a faith which is in fact the 
instinctive sense of our natural human resource, none 
the less true because it is an assumption, and we 
know not how we come by it. Science itself rests 
on assumptions. Now the basis of the philosophy 
of life in all ages is simply a sublime assumption, as 
familiar to Socrates as to Fenelon or Paul, — that 
the universe means our good, that our destiny is in 
best hands. 

This is the substance of that faith in self-renunci- 
ation, in which philosopher and saint agree, — tri- 
umphal song of all freedom and progress since the 
world began. It is simply a law of right reason as 
seen by man's ideal eyesight, namely, that one 
should not ultimately lose anything which it is es- 
sential to the good of each and all that he should 
keep. Whatever things can be taken from him then 
will, in going, but bring the value and security of 
this highest ownership to light. This hold we have 
on our own ideal personality is indeed the only real 
estate for the richest of us. Our science of property 
and production needs infusion of the spirit of that 
invincible old Stoic, of whom Plutarch says that, 
when he had lost his country and his family in the 
destruction of Megara, himself escaping hardly and 



GAIN IN LOSS. 



335 



naked out of the flames, he said, " I Lave saved all 
my goods, — my justice, my courage, my temperance, 
my prudence. I have lost nothing ; for all I could 
call my own I had about me." It required a de- 
vout faith that tbe order of destiny was on his 
side so to lift up his heart with manly trust. And 
the somewhat rough counsel of another of these 
Stoics, " Turn thy face about, and shut up every ave- 
nue to happiness," I must think, after all, a more 
believing creed than the Paleys and the Poor Rich- 
ards offer, — a sharp rebuke to the craving for self- 
gratification that is so much preached and practiced 
as the best religion and highest morality, now as it 
was then. In an age of refined sensibilities these 
maxims seem harsher than they did to their authors. 
But they contain that indispensable measure of the 
meanings of loss and gain, income and outgo, by the 
real laws of human life, which constitute freedom 
and success, — a larger faith, I think, than most of 
the recognized and orthodox ways of believing in 
God and immortality show to-day. 

Loss in the divine economy is the condition of 
gain, and growth proceeds by deprivations ; just as 
in mounting a ladder or a hill, every point is reached 
by the withdrawal of what we rested on before. If 
the mineral kept its coherence, how could it mount 
up in the sap, and shape the fine tissues of grass and 
flower ? If the grass did not wither, how were the 
animal structure fed ? Nature loved her giant tree- 
ferns, a million ages ago, her pterodactyls, her coral 
insects, but she dropped them that her nobler man 
might come. She is not so stricken with delight 
in her handsomest forms that she cannot let them 
go for an invisible better. If you saw the chrysalid 



336 



GAIN IN LOSS. 



for the first time, knowing not of the butterfly that 
should come, you would not want that snug nest, 
those folded wings, that perfect rest, disturbed. 
But nature bursts and flings it away, as one tired 
of it ; and there is an angel hovering out of the 
beautiful tomb. There can be no exception to this 
law of growth in the human and personal spheres. 

The changes that will not let the best of us alone 
are the stir of our opportunity. To prove our limits 
to be our liberties, — this is the sweetest triumph, 
this the eternal gospel, this the true reading of fate 
and providence, the right use of nature. We all 
want freedom. But we achieve it in proportion 
only as we dare abstain from wishing overmuch for 
what we cannot hold by any essential ownership. 
Sovereignty is within. Master your cravings, and 
you cannot then be subjugated. The rare achieve- 
ment of life is to be able to say of every desire, 
" This, O heaven, if it is best ; but if it is not best, 
then not this, but what is best." This is prayer, 
this only, this aspiration to freedom, this devotion to 
an ideal which no private insistence of desires must 
be permitted to foreclose. 

" Freedom," says Epictetus, " is not procured by 
full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling 
the desire. 4 Diogenes was free because things hung 
so loosely on him that there was no way of getting at 
him to enslave him.' " Are not what we call the vi- 
cissitudes of life, on the whole, nature's gradual com- 
pulsion of us — our own nature's — into a certain de- 
tachment, adequate to prevent enslavement to fears 
of losing, or despair at having lost, the objects of our 
desire ; a gradual compulsion, not such as to deaden 
our enthusiasm, or crush our affections, by proving 



GAIN IN LOSS. 



337 



them transitory ; not tending to make us love the less 
or hope the less, but enforcing control of this over-ea- 
ger grasping and absorbing of the soul; saving us 
from the fate of Hercules in the legend, whose tunic, 
dipped in the poison of too passionate desire, so 
cleaved to him that it carried his life with it when it 
was torn away ? 

In the passage of our life, this saving wisdom is 
pressed further and further home to us. Not enjoy- 
ment of any profit or of any pleasure we have desired 
gives the pure feeling of success, but this rather : that 
when what we pursue delays to come, or what we 
cling to fails, we are found free spirits still, able to 
be self -sustained, brave against odds ; able through 
our renunciation to reach powers upon higher levels, 
that compensate for loss upon the lower. 

Not freedom only, but completeness of growth, ma- 
turity in breadth and height, all are secured in this 
way. It is this that stimulates effort. One may 
not know it at the time, but for every step he gains 
in personal growth he has had to give up his con- 
tent with a lower stage, whether it be a complacent 
or merely a happy content. He never advances to 
a higher experience but he has surrendered what 
made the special delight of a lower one. We some- 
how pay our way on these invisible roads. And we 
pay because, upon the whole, it is infinitely better 
that we should pay ; it is self-respect, and moral 
sinew, and spiritual joy, — in a word, the tap-root of 
our growth. 

What seems an enforced fate is thus the only pos- 
sible process of freedom. And how wide a ground 
is here covered ! For, as daylight shows but a slen- 
der fragment of the universe, and we know not till 

22 



338 



GAIN IN LOSS. 



we have seen it depart that the spaces around us 
are full of shining worlds, so our human nature is 
but an unexplored country, known but in a corner 
till we have suffered loss of delights we basked in 
on the shores, as if they were all-sufficient and inca- 
pable of change. Without such impulse we shall 
never climb its heights of vision, nor mine its un- 
sunned wealth of uses, nor draw out its finer harvests 
of tenderness, nor trace the mystery of its waters to 
their hidden fountains above our conscious selves. 
What we are and can do, what others are and need, 
we can know only by such enforced explorations of 
our own nature. Only the great lack can open the 
great resource. I think sometimes that this law is 
after all the explanation of physical death, and of 
the utter blindness of our understanding as to all 
that may lie beyond it. Let us not distrust this 
total lack of life ; wait till it comes, and see^ what 
comes of it. 

Our finest pleasures are brought in the surprise 
with which we greet unexpected powers, sprung 
upon us in the crisis of privation. There is appar- 
ently even a natural dependence of our satisfactions 
on some previous sense of loss, just as the delicious 
thrill of the first spring day comes, in fact, of the 
restoration of what the winter had withheld. Plato, 
you know, thought that knowledge is reminiscence, 
— a recovery of what we have lost ; and we may, 
perhaps, explain in this way the delightful sense of 
acquiring whatever is worth having. How can we 
more thoroughly bestir ourselves to seek any high 
ideal than by esteeming it as something really and 
essentially our own, which has been kept from us 
by our own fault or weakness ? Ever some form of 



GAIN IN LOSS. 



339 



loss must condition the sense of gain. What is the 
ground of inspiration always but self - surrender ? 
Renunciation must cleave the path for its fires, in 
eloquence, in sainthood, in prophecy, in daily hero- 
ism and consecration which no pen records ; just as 
in every natural process, it is the breaking loose 
from old binding conditions that makes possible the 
incoming of fresh, and higher forces ; in crystalliza- 
tion, chemical structure, physiological development, 
health by exercise, music, — in all which a certain 
self -loosing from fixed atomic positions opens the 
way to an influx of beauty and power. 

From such hints as these, can we hesitate to infer 
that this is the meaning of what we call loss itself, 
in the economy of the spiritual universe ? 

The old Hindu philosophy called everything be- 
low God Maya, or Illusion. There is a practical 
truth veiled here we all must learn. 

You have seen a little picture of what seems to be 
a death's head ; but which, as you approach it, turns 
into a pleasant room, and the eyeless sockets become 
two happy children at play. It is a petty trick of 
art ; but the sublime craft of nature is imaged in it. 
We cannot comprehend what we call evil, in any 
form, until we remember the laws of illusion. Plu- 
tarch counsels, in his treatise on " The Tranquillity 
of the Mind," that we alter the nature of our misfor- 
tunes by putting a different construction upon them. 
This is not mockery. Doubtless there hides in each 
a metamorphosis. But we must see what the eye 
cannot, to find it. You must carry the ideal, the 
prophecy, in yourself ; and you must seek the real 
there, not in the fixed outward fact. Here lies a 
dead acorn cup. But if you look at that decay only, 



340 



GAIN IN LOSS. 



you will not perceive that a living tree will be grow- 
ing where it fell, or that the same earth that absorbs 
the shell will invite and feed a warm quick root. 
If we do not keep the eye quick to detect this new- 
comer when he shall appear, the eye will grow blind 
and dead as the dust it cleaves to. 

And, as the bodily eye cannot bear to dwell too 
long on one color, but demands to be relieved by 
the complementary one in the perfect white ray, 
so the spiritual organ, or eye of the personality, 
wastes away when one nurses his calamities, and 
turns from the refreshment that balances them in 
the completeness of our spiritual nature. Our eyes 
would not be made as they are, were not the alter- 
nation of colors needful for their health already pro- 
vided for them in the sunbeam. And so the differ- 
ent moral construction which we need to put on th<^ 
darkest estate to restore our self-poise is doubtless 
already involved in the relations of that estate, could 
we but recognize it, and bound some time to appear 
therein. Goethe said he never had an affliction he 
did not turn into a poem. 

This philosophy is the salvation that needs no 
miracle or supernatural messenger, and cannot abide 
one. It is the quintessence of nature. Just as the 
date-palm of the desert grows with its head in the 
" fires of heaven " and its feet in the salt sands, so 
brave men, by a natural dynamic force, make oppor- 
tunities out of the severest failures. Frustrate Maz- 
zini with heart-sickening disappointments and de- 
lays, and he proves a clear-sighted prophet of the 
most devoutly noble philosophy, religious and polit- 
ical in one, that the age can conceive. Rome smote 
into atoms all the temporal ambitions and compla- 



GAIN IN LOSS. 



341 



cent prophecies of a Semitic race, and there sprung 
out of that dust of perished hopes a saint, who could 
say to the desire of kingdoms, material at least, 
" Get behind me, Satan ! " and " What shall it profit 
a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own 
soul ? " 

These are just high constructions put on apparent 
loss, and as natural as they are noble. For did not 
these brave men find their opportunity waiting for 
them ? They simply saw an eternal fact of nature, 
waiting its own proper next step, namely, the fact 
which they must be and could be. They accepted 
the law forewrit in life itself, that was making the 
history whereof they were part. They just had their 
eyes open, and saw. What was this high construc- 
tion of the fate that awaited them but the right read- 
ing for themselves, with some approach to truth, of 
what the providential laws have meant to enforce or 
effect, not by their hard experience only, but by all 
loss and cross ? For the best and bravest do but in- 
terpret nature more or less wisely, illustrate what 
experience may involve, in diverse forms, for all 
men. Where Jesus or another is taken for more 
than an illustration of these saving principles of hu- 
man nature, the soul of man is desecrated by every 
word that is lifted in his praise. 

The lesson of life is to take the ideal elements of 
experience to be the great tidal wave of our nature, 
not exceptional and local attractions in certain per- 
sons. 

It is a suggestive fact, in this point of view, that 
we are wont to look forward to troubles with fears 
of what they will inflict, but back on them with 
wonder at what they have saved us from. We ad- 



342 



GAIN IN LOSS, 



mit that we would not have had it otherwise with 
us, though misfortune seemed so bad in the passing. 
We would not exchange our lot with another's ; the 
risk were too great, bright as the change might look 
in many ways. After all, it is our own lot; anoth- 
er's were strange and alien. Personal annoyances 
and grievances that beset our days have, more often 
than not, proved to be followers of our star, bringing 
tributes, — bearers of fortitude, tact, better under- 
standing of surroundings; many a happy surprise 
and transformation of ugly circumstance came in 
them. Our needs are God's opportunity, and man's 
also. The law of the storm is in the soul too. As 
the lightning shoots from the cloud in its advance, 
so the rainbow looks back from it, when it has gone 
by, meeting the sunshine that gleams brightest where 
our fields are wet with heaviest showers. 

And as we wonder when we think what our losses 
have done for us, so we are as often astonished in 
discovering what they have saved us from. The 
ball on the very top of the spire of St. Paul's in 
London is at the end of a narrow iron neck, and 
the traveler who has come up to that dizzy height, 
through that reed literally shaken in the wind, trem- 
bles as he feels it vibrate beneath him ; yet the vi- 
bration is his safety, since the shaft must yield so 
much or it would break. And so what we dread 
most in our lot is apt to be but some divine adjust- 
ment of our circumstances to save us from the perils 
of our position. The vibration that threatens every- 
thing is a peculiar care. Many a man has been 
saved by reverses in business from that absorption in 
riches which turns life to dust. And many a wo- 
man has found in the same experience a dignity and 



GAIN IN LOSS. 



343 



sweetness of which luxury was burying the possibil- 
ity. The necessity that sent her to some work not 
usually thought feminine was a path to the enlarge- 
ment of her whole inward life. 

One thinks himself, perhaps, the most unfortunate 
of beings ; his misfortunes always strike him "in the 
weakest point," where he was " least prepared for 
them." Ah, my friend, where should they strike, 
if they are to secure you ? How shall the break- 
water be kept strong, if the breaches do not warn us 
where the danger lies ? It is with you but as with 
everybody. Or do you not confide in these adjust- 
ments, nor think them in any sense " divine " ? At 
least, are not they as likely to be good as any you 
would put in the place of them ? Are we, then, so 
wise in what is best? "Have not our very prayers," 
asks Seneca, "been sometimes more pernicious to 
ourselves than the curses of our enemies, so that we 
must pray again to have our former ones reversed? " 
" Man," says the Koran, " prayeth for evil as he 
prayeth for good ; for man is hasty." 

Let us not think ourselves lost, when a special re- 
liance fails us. Let us rather believe that the sov- 
ereignties of law are to weave all things for the 
best ends. To them is committed our destiny ; that 
is certain. Let us then be swift to believe that they 
intend our education and our elevation, and will 
achieve this as they best can. The status of our life 
at this moment must at least be the starting-point 
for the higher issues. What has befallen, then, is 
what shall and must, by the best use of it, be made 
to prove best in the end. So to interpret and use it 
is religious faith. 

Do not succumb to any loss as irretrievable. To 



344 



GAIN IN LOSS. 



win now from it what Heaven will make of it at 
last is success. 

The sweep of these friendly shuttles covers what 
we bring on ourselves likewise. A vice is indeed a 
" womb of future pain ; " but the pain itself, what 
is that? It is what befriends, what saves us. The 
only alternative to an ignoble and useless despair is 
to interpret all penalty in the light of the truth that 
loss cannot stay loss, but constantly presses towards 
conversion into the good it intends. 

What then ? Does not all this mean Optimism ? 
Certainly it means that all power of growth and ser- 
vice depends, know it or not as we may, on an ideal 
faith in somewhat all-sufficient, unerring, infinitely 
wise and tender, inseparable from the inmost of life, 
bent on our good as we are not, set against our fail- 
ure as we cannot be. It means that there can in 
fact be no philosophy of life, no law of good, no be- 
lief in duty, no aspiration, but must have such in- 
dwelling perfection as being alone reliable to guar- 
antee its word. This only is my God ; infinite 
ground of all finite being ; essence of reason and 
good. 

The fault with the popular superstition of special 
providences is that it does not make Providence 
special enough, does not make law itself our Prov- 
idence, does not identify it with the inmost human- 
ity of us and the normal course of things itself, but 
makes it sit aloof and put in a finger here and there, 
to secure us happiness, where men's imperfect eye- 
sight cannot detect how what they call the " un- 
aided " laws of nature could have delivered them 
without it. No, friends ! To the laws of nature 
one event is not more difficult than another ; they 



GAIN IN LOSS. 



345 



are never unaided, for they are themselves aid, and 
aid only ; nor is there one effect of these laws in 
which dwells not inwardly, however obscurely, the 
same Care that dwells in any other, let this have 
brought us what delight it may. 

Nor can this be less true of the spiritual than of 
the material universe. If God is the overruling 
good that penetrates and moves and guides, that in- 
forms and energizes every law of spirit and matter ; 
absent from no instant of life, from no current of ex- 
perience, from no vicissitude of the lot, then you can- 
not think, you cannot grieve, you cannot doubt, nor 
even sin yourself away from this inherent Care that 
holds every strand of your being, so slender that you 
know not of its existence, and guides this for the best 
by a love that is its own eternal necessity. 

What then is the sum ? To trust in special plan, 
desire, happiness, gift, or work, as guaranteed by 
God, as outside care for that one gift or work is 
inadequate. One word means more and greater. 
Trust life, — life itself as a whole, as life, and what- 
ever its laws bring. Trust it not because you can 
understand all it means, but because it is your life 
and your destiny, and because you are more than 
understanding or experience, knowing how to honor 
your ideal. This is to be strong, helpful, and of 
steadfast cheer. God grant us this : no prayer can 
ask for more ; no power suffice with less. 

This philosophy of loss and gain is no substitute 
for hands and feet. It is the true working faith. 
No room for a quietism that expects all things will 
come right of themselves, refusing to see what must 
be suffered and sacrificed before the common good 
can be achieved, — no room for this, in an ideal that 



346 



GAIN IN LOSS. 



exalts those very renunciations which the quietist 
and the sentimentalist dread to make. Every rela- 
tion and institution is being tried by fire. And it is 
only the renunciation, for every function in our life, 
of all egotistic claims and selfish expectations in the 
conduct of it that can make the fire a flame of crea- 
tion, and not destruction. There is no demoraliza- 
tion like the self-idolatry that claims a right to moral 
and spiritual values without paying the honest price 
in sacrifices and disciplines. From the spiritist, who 
thinks he gets the wisdom of Pythagoras or the song 
of Shelley out of the vaticinations of his medium, to 
the public manager, who expects to remove deep and 
wide-spread vices by the rapid manipulation of them 
with sweeping machinery of votes and laws, there is 
the same delusion of ignoring those conditions of all 
growth which lie in personal sacrifice, discipline, toil ; 
in short, in paying the honest price for your object. 
In a transitional time it is the grand disciplines, es- 
sential to progress, that must be welcomed as the 
path of power. It is just these men try hardest to 
get over, while they are the substance of the whole. 

The penalties which society dreads the most are 
usually the narrow paths of its escape from dissolu- 
tion. If, for example, the crash did not follow over- 
speculation ; if trying to pay public debts in a depre- 
ciated legal tender did not ruin credit ; if trade were 
not driven to confess higher forces than that of 
" every man for himself " or " his class ; " if pruri- 
ence and self-pushing, if sensation and noise of num- 
bers, if herding and massing, the high pressure of 
machinery in Church and State, did not bring their 
sure penalties, then, indeed, we might well despair 
of the world, for it would be a farce to speak of jus- 



GAIN IN LOSS. 



347 



tice, of responsibility, of personality, or of God. The 
selfish instincts having full swing, the earth would 
go to the beasts apace. I know it is said that mis- 
chiefs are not cured, after all, by the stern lessons of 
penalty ; that nations do not heed them. But the 
ideas that ferment in modern society prove the con- 
trary. The life of the century, teeming with be- 
neficent purpose, rich in noble enterprise and ideal 
aim, disproves it. To the woes and pains of nations 
do we largely owe these better dreams and doings ; 
they are shaped on the forges of salutary penalty. 
The five years of our civil war were the healthiest, 
in this sense, of our national existence. 

44 We ought," says Plato, " to pray for just penal- 
ties as the best gifts of the gods." Whenever a di- 
vine law rights itself by proving wrong to be wretch- 
edness every good man hails a rainbow that shall 
overarch the world. The whelming tide wave that 
carries great ships crashing among the rafters of 
men's island homes, and the red lava rolling down 
on Herculaneum or Naples, are appalling ; but the 
water-wall is but gravitation, and the volcano is a 
safety-valve. If the world-preserving laws could be 
suspended, in the interest of twenty cities or a hun- 
dred isles, we might well be inconsolable, but not at 
the destruction of even so many as these by the 
steadfast operation of those laws. And the retribu- 
tive action of the moral laws is also world-preserving 
in a higher sense, and a more indispensable one still. 
But in one thing we may trust. The invariable 
moral order will treat us according to our need. And 
it is simply their inherent tendency to the preserva- 
tion of us that makes them invariable, bring they 
what they may. 



348 



GAIN IN LOSS. 



And I fully believe that the storms that have 
broken in on the childish security and self-indul- 
gence of the American people have already done 
great good to their spiritual life, little credit as can 
be claimed for any wisdom or virtue of their own, in 
the way these storms were met. I believe there is 
more religion in America of the better sort than ever 
before ; not the religion that is buzzing and swarm- 
ing about its denominational hives, hanging on the 
skirts of inherited revelations and the lips of a pre- 
scribed divinity, but a deeper experience behind this, 
which teaches men that a living God rules, from 
within, this living world and Nature, its garment of 
beauty and use. I believe that even minds which 
still cling to tradition are going through a deeper 
education than the Church affords them. The fur- 
rows of its plow are like the wheels of the prophet's 
vision, that went straight forward whither the Face 
above them was turned. They are enforced sacri- 
fices of prepossession, interest, instituted form, to the 
larger life of universal principles and moral sover- 
eignties. 

How serious with this significance are all the ques- 
tions which loom upon us as we look over the rim 
of what is so plainly an opening epoch ! How they 
all touch the deepest springs of society, test all foun- 
dations, pierce to the depths of personality, of faith, 
and of fear ! They are slow to be settled ; they front 
us so formidably because they are, but opening phases 
of yet profounder revolutions. It is because they 
point beyond themselves that they are so great and 
bewildering ; the prophet always dazzles us by the 
future he but half reveals. 

Thus the Chinese question touches the dark, diffi- 



GAIN IN LOSS. 



349 



cult problems of labor on the one side, and the great 
white light of free universal religion on the other. 
Even the Mormon delusion is but one difficult form 
in which the question how to guard with purity, 
equality, and unity the shrine of the family, on which 
civilization rests, is coming up for solution. The 
reconstruction question still reaches out into vast un- 
developed problems of the relations of races under 
the laws of their indefeasible brotherhood. The yet 
unsolved question how to reconcile political equality 
with respect for the authority that wise and just per- 
sons properly possess, to guide the ignorant and rule 
the unworthy, fronts us at every step in political 
progress. To what untried experiments and subtle 
relations of social construction, as well as to what 
sacrifice of the prejudices of centuries, do the irref- 
utable claims of woman, social and political, point ! 
And the demands of labor, as yet confounded with 
the desires and expectations of special self-styled 
classes, open out into the more bewildering problem 
of the Organization of Industry ; a sea wherein the 
boldest navigators are glad to take in sail and hug 
the shore. Again, with what a gigantic hand, ma- 
terial consolidation is pressing on the still unde- 
veloped moral capacity of individuals and nations, 
with railroad and telegraph that go round the globe, 
bringing the whole race in infinite detail upon each 
private brain and heart. Quinet said finely that " if 
the Church does not convoke them, God holds his 
Ecumenicals in every age of history." What, then, 
shall we say of a time when every question and fact 
you touch is ecumenical, whether in science, in com- 
merce, in politics, or in faith? In reconciling a 
world-life like this with the culture of the personal 



350 



GAIN IN LOSS. 



mind and character, how many narrow interests must 
be abandoned, how many dreams of individual sway 
and world-management by system and dogma and 
institution must be surrendered ! 

Of all this we see neither the end, nor scarce the 
beginning ; yet we know that the eternal law of gain 
by loss, of growth by change of form, of inspiration 
by sacrifice, will glorify the whole. With the day 
the light, with the road the strength to tread it. It 
takes longer time to grow by stern discipline than 
by intuition, by enforcement of moral law than by 
spontaneity of love; but what the sweetest saint is 
learning in his intimacies with the Spirit the nations 
are earning through their sorrows and their storms. 

As the vapors that work in the boiling lava crys- 
tallize, as it cools, into lovely forms of sheaves and 
flowers and finest rays on the walls of its hidden 
cavities, waiting till the slow frosts and suns or the 
quick hammer (of the geologist) shall open them to 
view, so in the hot depths of this fermenting age 
there have been shaping finer issues than any of us 
dream of, and coming years will show what delicate 
structures were organizing in the stirred soul of man, 
which no eye had noted while the hand of Eternal 
Order wrought them in the dark. 

Grander than all failure of wrong recurs without 
failure the ideal right. Over the rim of the open- 
ing epoch we see its unfading sun. Come what may, 
to each or to all, it is the dignity and the sweetness 
of life to trust that. 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 1 



There is a noble saying of Augustine, which will 
long outlive his denunciations of human nature as 
a diabolic power : " Thou hast made us, O God, for 
thyself ; and our souls are restless till they come to 
thee." It was never more timely than it is now 
to study the track of this indispensable gravitation 
which all history confesses; this aspiration of man's 
religious nature, as subject to its object, to find it- 
self inwardly and essentially one therewith. 

For there was never more said than now in criti- 
cism of the term " religion," and of what it claims to 
mean ; in the name of faculties, too, that are forever 
valid. Many intelligent persons are inclined to 
leave the word out of their dictionary ; and there is 
not merely a great deal of loose denunciation of men 
as atheists by those who have as blind a horror of 
theism as they have of atheism, and hardly know 
any difference between them, but a great deal of 
equaj vagueness and delusion in claiming to be athe- 
ist. And I begin by putting in this ancient affir- 
mation in rebuttal at once of the charges and the 
claims, — " restless till we find God." 

But the language must have other meaning than 
that materialistic one of search after an outward 

1 Reprinted from The Radical for April, 1870. 



352 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



object, which makes dogmatic theology such an of- 
fense to the best science and speculation of our time. 

The deep confession of all human history — it may 
surely mean this : that we cannot do without believ- 
ing, in some form, that Life itself, in our inmost 
identity with it, is pure, all-sufficient wisdom and 
care ; that we all would find Truth, would see Good ; 
never loving error because it is error, never avoiding 
right because it is right ; that liberty comes only in 
the recognition of moral order and spiritual perfection 
as the ground of our being and our growth, and in a 
spontaneous delight in these which proves the human 
to be vitally divine ; that we find ourselves fettered 
and miserable in disobeying the laws of our physical 
and moral nature, or offending against the sense we 
have of what is highest and best. It means that we 
are bound to learn that only such living as is eter- 
nally just and noble has the sovereign powers of our 
life on its side ; that it is only in the ideal we live for, 
the aspiration to perfection, to see, trust, adore, the 
best, to become one with it, and even generate it, 
that we can be really one with ourselves. Now it 
may not be according to the definitions set forth in 
catechisms or confessions, nor to the imagery of crea- 
tive power in the old Shemitic Bible, to call all this 
the seeking and finding of God. It has nothing to 
do with " fiat of creation," nor with " plan of salva- 
tion." Yet it is really the substance of all genuine 
religious vision and life. And if it were recognized 
as such, there would probably be an end of many 
blind charges of atheism that are brought against 
devout men, and of a great many claims put in by 
good and true men to be atheists. Moreover, it 
would greatly encourage us in the hope to see relig- 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



353 



ion justified, the name itself freed from meanings 
that repel honest minds, and a better idea prevail of 
the spiritual capabilities and dispositions of men in 
general. 

In this sense I do not hesitate to affirm, and to 
urge the belief as of the utmost moment, that there 
is no one who does not intrinsically desire to find 
God. There is no one of rational mind who is not 
restless till he sees truth and does justice, and rests 
under a perfect care involved in the substance of his 
being. Let our faults be what they may, we are all 
in some way or other feeling after life that solves all 
experience and makes all lives one. We do not 
want to be cheated out of the highest and best : we 
want it more than all we have or are. Will such an 
one pay the price ? Yes, if you can make it clear to 
him that you have brought him what is really a way 
to that. Take what track he may, God is shaping 
his experience, and has deeper hold on his tides and 
currents than all other attractions, after all. We 
admire the thought that genius "cannot free itself 
from God." But what is human nature itself but 
the genius of God ? 

In view of this inherent necessity, this inner move- 
ment, so little understood, of instinct, process, proph- 
ecy, — involving inalienable possession of the soul 
by its own higher relations, — there is no possibility 
of essential or absolute atheism. Yet there is a 
negative attitude, conscious or unconscious, towards 
the really divine in certain directions, which may 
properly be called relative atheism. 

And this in two very different forms, whereof the 
one is speculative, the other practical. But both ap- 
pear to depend on deficiency of supplies from the 

23 



354 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



moral element, though in ways carefully to be dis- 
tinguished from each other. In the one case its fail- 
ure is scientific, in the other it is personal. In the 
one it is the intellect that is robbed, in the other the 
heart and life. 

I. Look first at physical science. The crown of 
civilization is the reverent recognition and use of 
universal laws. Now, every law of nature should 
help reveal the essential Providence involved in 
beauty, order, good. Behind all law is life, which 
alone constitutes its energy. And so the unities and 
stabilities which science unfolds in nature should 
merge nature to our thought in Intelligence, one and 
perfect. Yet much modern thought about nature 
calls itself positive science, in virtue, partly, of stand- 
ing in negative relations towards this very basis on 
which laws and phenomena rest. According to Mr. 
Huxley, whom I do not, however, adduce as atheis- 
tic, by any means, " it makes no difference whether 
thought be regarded as a form of matter, or matter 
as a quality of thought." But it makes a great deal ; 
for without intelligence at the root of things, things 
become to intellect itself the root of intelligence ; the 
mind sees itself as a mere result of material sub- 
stances ; hence a mere finite result, secondary to 
1 li matter, and created somehow by stock and stone, 

not divinely surrounding and involving them. Your 
dream of beauty, your ideal of right, has then to ask 
authority from mineral and vegetable ; your liberty 
to will, hope, aspire, love, takes limits from the round 
of physical successions, and waits on the unprogres- 
sive rules of unconscious matter. The imagination 
shall find sanction for its intimations of things un- 
seen and unfathomable nowhere but in the dead ma- 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



355 



terials it uses feebly to convey these to the outward 
sense. It is itself but the product of cerebral con- 
volutions, and of the food that nourishes them. 
Homer and iEschylus, Plato, Isaiah, and Jesus, 
Shakespeare and Goethe, the Bibles and the dramas, 
u Psalm of Praise" and 44 Ode of Immortality," are 
evolutions from phosphorus and carbon, and resolva- 
ble, it should seem, by chemical analysis, back into 
acid and salt. Finally, " protoplasm " did it all ; and 
we have made the crowning discovery of the basis 
of this in the slime spread over the bottom of the sea ! 

Now protoplasm is a fine word, nowise to be 
scorned ; but old Anaxagoras went behind and be- 
yond it, more than twenty centuries ago, when 
he pronounced the simpler word Nous, or Mind. 
Whether thought be regarded as a property of mat- 
ter, or matter a quality of thought, may make no dif- 
ference within the limits of crucible and retort. But 
what if those divine men had thoroughly accepted 
the former proposition, and all it involves of spiritual 
attitude and method ? Would they have trusted the 
" glory and the dream " that now makes man's hard- 
est struggle with outward conditions prophetic, and 
life itself majestic, through its relations to the Infi- 
nite and Eternal? 

But much of our " positivism " insists, even more 
negatively, that intelligence does not stand behind or 
within what are called physical laws. And what is 
or the reason ? Nothing, certainly, in the conditions 
revelations of science ; which indeed refutes all tra- 
ditions of arbitrary or capricious Godhead, but only 
makes evident what is divinest in intelligence itself, 
— namely, immutable order and serene, all-sustain- 
ing law. 



356 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



Speculative scientific atheism comes of the effort 
to separate the scientific from the moral element. 
For it is mainly through our perception of the just, 
the wise, the good, the fair (moral predicates all), 
that intelligence can be recognized behind and within 
laws of nature. This is in largest degree a moral 
experience. No other can so quicken the sense of 
that mystery of life on which the material world 
rests, out of which it is continually renewed. Dead, 
stiff, merciless, inexorable, mindless, and purposeless 
is it, but for this eyesight kindled from the heart 
and conscience. This only hears the Eternal Voice, 
finds the Benignant Will, and makes the universe 
adequate response of Spirit to our spiritual desire. 
Truth of truth, it is not to be dismissed as " mere 
poetry and sentimentality," that " from the soul must 
issue forth the glory of the earth and sky ; " that the 
light we see by is " the light that never was on sea 
or land." Fail to carry this idealism into our sci- 
ence, and no analysis will ever bring us God ; in other 
words, disclose the Infinite and Eternal Good, in that 
direction. Out of gases, minerals, forms, colors, or- 
gans, there shall come invariable successions ; shall 
come rules and phenomena, ending in all-creative 
" protoplasm," but nothing more. And you arrive at 
Mr. Huxley's crowning prediction, that "science will 
teach us to dispense with the notion of spontaneity 
and spirit." You come beyond that to the conclu- 
sion of certain French positivists, that science ought 
to be and must be atheist. And, indeed, there is 
much groundless concession by many, who should 
find better meaning for the name of theism, that 
modern science is in fact, as such, atheistic, — a 
statement which is nowise admissible in any but the 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



357 



most superficial sense. In nothing is the inadequacy * 
of the merely analytic process shown more conclu- 
sively than in its dealing with things spiritual in the 
interest of science. It never reveals truth in its 
divine form of life ; to dissect, it must destroy. It 
cannot see any element of existence, as existent; 
for each lives in its active relations to the others. 
Analysis, however useful in its way, slays this beau- 
tiful unity in which life and power dwell ; there is 
left a heap of dead fibres and organs ; and what 
resemblance is there to the living body, when you 
have put these together again ? Phosphorus in the 
growing grain is food for human brains ; but extract 
the phosphorus by chemical process, and it is poison. 
Being must be seen in its natural and vital relations, 
or it is not seen at all. Thus science cannot be de- 
fined as distinct from faith without destroying it: 
there can be no science without conscious or uncon- 
scious forms of faith, — faith in the faculties, faith in 
nature, faith in law and in unity. You cannot cut 
off revelation from evolution or culture ; for there is 
no genuine culture which is not revelation, however 
imperfect. And when we try to separate the intel- 
lectual from the moral and spiritual relations, we 
lose the living bond which makes the essential truth 
of each. Science becomes an autopsy, and nature 
has no informing soul. 

The " positive " scientist regards God as at best a 
hypothesis, and refers it to that silent deep of the 
unknown that rounds all we know or dream. But 
how eloquent is that silence ! — how calm, benignant, 
creative ! The stillness of all greatness ! Can we 
for an instant believe that it is not Life ? 

Now, speculative atheism of course does not imply 



358 



THE SEAECH FOR GOD. 



non-recognition of moral distinctions ; it brings no 
disparagement upon one's private conscience or heart. 
It means, however, that he does not let his moral 
intuitions enter into his theory of physical processes 
and laws ; that he tries to hold the two apart, or at 
all events does not allow his own moral constitution 
to determine his interpretation of laws, or his notion 
of what law itself means and implies. But the 
moral constitution being cheated of its scientific 
rights by this dangerous analysis, which " murders to 
dissect," science becomes able to reveal nothing but 
dead mechanism. That is owing to his speculative 
theory. Only a theological bigot would infer either 
that he was in all this lacking in manly virtues, or 
that he had come to be either absolutely or practi- 
cally atheist. But certainly his faith in the sover- 
eignty of the just and good must be weakened, if he 
fail to see them as the law of the universe, every- 
where authoritative and divine. It is not necessary 
that he should be able to see how or wherein all phys- 
ical laws are wise and just and fair ; but it is of great 
importance that he not only believe it wise and just 
and fair that they should be so, but that he keep that 
faith as a basis of scientific study. Then law be- 
comes life, and " force " is but another name for 
thought and love. 

Ascend to the next sphere, from the science of 
nature to the science of mind. Here the same diffi- 
culties arise out of the refusal of scientific validity 
to the moral intuitions. And in consequence of this 
unnatural separation, you find certain philosophers 
inclining to the belief that metaphysics also are 
properly atheistic. 

« What I cannot understand," say these philoso- 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



359 



phers, "is unknowable by me. What is uncondi- 
tioned by my faculties is beyond them, and so incon- 
ceivable. God, therefore, is not given in metaphys- 
ics. He must be, if found at all, an object of faith." 
But they gain nothing so, for faith cannot change 
the faculties ; otherwise, what becomes of metaphys- 
ical science itself, which rests on the steadfastness 
of the mental laws and processes ? Is it to faith in 
a "revelation" that we are remanded? So Mr. 
Mansel would imply. But that also must be some 
form of faith by the natural faculties. It is they 
that must by their own laws perceive, prove, and ac- 
cept the so-called revelation. And so it all comes 
back again to faith in the faculties ; and, in fact, the 
revelation required can only be given in them. On, 
then, with your metaphysics, or science of the human 
mind, O philosopher ! It is God there or nowhere. 
And why do you not find him there ? Because you 
are trying to separate your head from your heart 
and your soul. The powers must act together, as a 
unit. Would you not make the universe a skeleton 
flower, green life gone out of it by your metaphysical 
acids, dead, white framework only remaining, then 
carry your moral sense with you ; its innate royalties 
are the soul of every realm. When you see a func- 
tion of memory, or a law of perception, let your nat- 
ural piety recognize it as wise and just and good and 
fair. Be loyal to the moral authority that affirms it 
ought to be, and somehow must be. Let your soul 
bring in the leap of your mind to grasp it. Then, 
if you cannot see God in perfect, absolute essence, 
you will know the Infinite and Eternal in their re- 
lation to real and positive existence ; feel their free- 
dom in your own ; know their inseparableness from 



360 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



every movement of your spiritual being. Metaphys- 
ics do not prove God, but why should they hide him ? 
He is their moral and spiritual basis, and proves 
them. Metaphysics have a right to be religion, if 
the mind and its laws are essentially in accord with 
eternal realities ; and if they do not recognize the 
fact, it is because they abdicate their own conditions, 
and insist on saying to that sense of the morally fit 
and right, which involves wisdom, beauty, truth, and 
good, " I know you not as having anything to do 
with intellectual science." 

Ascend another step, into what may be distinct- 
ively called the sphere of worship. Here at least 
God must be found, we should say, if anywhere. 
But what a fact now meets us ! Even Christianity, 
with all its pretension to be the typical religion, rests 
in a representative of God. Its Christ supplants the 
Infinite and Eternal ; and again the essential rela- 
tion of man's spiritual intuitions to deity is denied. 
As the positivist and the metaphysician set deity 
aside because they cannot comprehend it, so the 
Christian believer for the same reason. He covers 
up the negation by putting a man in place of God, 
who forthwith becomes an " impalpable effluence " 
from this one personage, or else a divine-human form 
ii embodied therein. Only in the face of this " express 

image," " fullness of Godhead bodily," " mediator," 
" master," can the living God be adequately known ! 

The universal demand for incarnation, or avatar, 
is here confined to one central form. God must be 
manifested, once for all, as perfect, in this. And so 
the inevitably imperfect, limited form comes to swal- 
low up the substance ; and, however the symbol 
may have brought noble traits and thoughts into 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



361 



honor, and served high purposes for a time, it be- 
comes a drawback when the matured soul demands 
liberty to find God in all forms of experience and 
culture. 

We do not call this atheism, since it insists it has 
found God ; though showing us simply a man, his- 
torically vague, and without the guarantee of even an 
ideal unity of character, but standing for many di- 
verse conceptions and mutually exclusive standards. 
We do not call it atheism, though it is certainly not 
pure theism. Yet it involves much speculative ne- 
gation towards the immanence of deity in the moral 
being, and much practical negation towards the de- 
mands of this divine inherence upon our faith in 
freedom and progress. 

We saw the result of leaving these elements of 
consciousness out of physics and metaphysics. The 
positivist Comte turns the Infinite over to the meta- 
physicians : he will not have God in natural science. 
The Mansel school of metaphysicians turn him over 
to " revelation," as equally out of place in the science 
of mind. In just the same way the worshiper of 
supernatural revelation consigns him over to the 
dreamy realm of intangible essences, and puts an im- 
perfect, historical person, with whose recorded or 
transmitted life the human ideal of deity is held 
bound somehow or other to find and keep itself rec- 
onciled, in his place. And the same reason is thought 
valid in all three instances, namely, that God is in- 
comprehensible and unknowable, and hence to hu- 
man conceptions, in those three spheres, as good as 
non-existent. 

A moment's reflection shows us that in the last- 
mentioned sphere also, as in the two former, the diffi- 



362 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



culty lies in a disparagement of the moral element 
(as we have already defined it). Take this into re- 
ligious inquiry, as essential to the very powers that 
are to solve the problem, and Deity comes home in 
what is nearer than physical nature, than metaphys- 
ical philosophy, than venerated persons, and yet is 
the substance of good in them all ; as ideal princi- 
ples, justice, wisdom, goodness, beauty, truth, are be- 
yond limitation by personalities, beyond special reve- 
lations, beyond ecclesiastical traditions. They lift us 
into the freedom of the Eternal and Infinite. They 
are, by this transcendence, the never-failing inspira- 
tion of growth, and the Providence that enfolds and 
shapes to highest issues all private and public experi- 
ence. What, then, if God be " incomprehensible" ? 
Is it necessary to comprehend what infinite love is, in 
order to apprehend that the very substance of our be- 
ing is mysteriously identified with whatsoever love 
in its essence means ? Must we be able to define or 
figure to ourselves the conception of eternity, in order 
to know that truth is eternal, and that right human 
living is eternal life ? Must we bind our commun- 
ion with the just, the good, the true, the humanly 
adequate and becoming, to some personal life, some 
special body of social circumstances, some individ- 
ual's work in human progress and upon human ideal- 
ism ? How should that be, when the principles into 
which the moral sense flowers out in its maturity as 
spiritual liberty essentially involve a freely advanc- 
ing ideal, at every new stage revealing more of 
God, whom nothing but such universal energy can 
adequately reveal ? 

II. Let us go a step further. What is practical 
atheism on these principles ? 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



363 



The question of positive and negative in religion 
is one of character, of essential morality ; not that 
bondage to outwardly imposed rules which goes cur- 
rently by the name of morality, but the essential re- 
lations of the soul to what is eternally just, beautiful, 
and true. And whatever intellectual skepticism 
may deny, it is only moral denial that makes practi- 
cal religious unbelief. And that which one's char- 
acter may make him believe is often a darker and 
drearier unbelief than words can express. 

" Every man," it was said of old, " walketh in his 
own God." Every man sees by the light of his own 
character. What he is goes straight up into his 
ideal, and under these limitations he conceives the 
eternal reality. " Membership of the body of Christ" 
does not save him from this profounder membership 
of his own personality ; and whether he adore the 
Messiah who promised to come in the clouds of a 
judgment -day eighteen hundred years ago, or the 
Buddha who ascended into nirvana, not to return 
from that eternal peace, it is" the life he has him- 
self shaped out of present moral forces within him 
that determines what the one person or the other 
shall be to him. " We receive but what we give." 

And so there are many objects of sight that are 
called God ; but the only way of seeing God must 
be through real participation of essential truth and 
good. However numerous the unrealities that go 
by that name, yet God is real, is reality itself ; and 
to live in and through these eternal principles is so 
far to find reality and to be reality. 

Now selfishness, whatever its creed, sees a being 
aloof from human nature and life, intent only on ag- 
grandizing himself. This is properly but blank noth- 



364 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



ingness and emptiness of deity, since there is nothing 
divine in selfish appropriation. Corrupt and mis- 
chievous habits in trading will fashion a trading god, 
venal and barbarian, a gigantic mirage of the market 
thrown up against the sky upon the background of 
a mean and tricky world. It is the shadow of the 
man's shop-life, and the soul of the universe has none 
the more to do with it from the fact that he calls 
it God. There is no such atheist as he who laughs 
in his sleeve when you speak to him of principles. 
This is an atheism one's own soul must judge and re- 
fute, — his soul craving bread, but fed with stones. 

What is the self-pushing politician's God but a 
compromise between the true and the popular, ready 
to be thrust aside into the third heavens as poor, 
dumb abstraction, even at that, when not wanted in 
politics? But is this God reality ? He is the shadow 
of political atheism ; another huge mirage of immo- 
rality. What cares the demagogue for this fetich of 
his own making? He swears by a new one with 
every political turn. They are all of the slime of 
the earth. 

The domineering dogmatist has his 44 God," — the 
man who insists on what he calls an 44 authoritative 
religion ; " who says, 44 Believe in Christ, or you go 
to perdition ; believe in the church of Christ, or he 
shall deny you at the last day." And what kind of 
deity can this spiritual martinet see ? Another 
shadow, projected from his own falsities ; a despot, 
whose war against freedom of conscience is waged 
by fulmination of pope, or craft of priest, or the civil 
arm, or the subtle poison of the confessional, or the 
dreadful preaching of wrathful judgment and eternal 
woe ; who, driven from inquisition and auto-da-f e, 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



365 



and made ridiculous in a papal syllabus excommu- 
nicating civilization, yet lurks in close -communion 
churches, rages in revival convulsions, writes fool- 
ish tracts, and invents wicked stories to scare weak 
nerves. An " authoritative Christian " shall think 
this very, real divinity. But what is it save mirage, 
again ; refracted folly, bigotry, tyranny, and fear ? 
Men who have shaped such a miserable phantasm, 
and called it God, are apt to cry out in the self-com- 
placency of their faith in it, " Thanks to our God, 
we are not merely moral men ! " " Merely " moral ! 
" Merely " in accord with principles that yield the 
beauty, the joy, and the liberty of oneness with na- 
ture and the soul ! But morality may well answer, 
somewhat sternly, " Thou who chargest another with 
living without God in the world, because living by 
character alone, what wouldst thou give him — grant- 
ing he is an atheist even, in the honesty of his specu- 
lative search — in place of his presumed unbelief ? 
A God without principles ; a God of mere power, 
brute might overmastering conscience, reason, love ? 
Nature knows no such. The soul, thine own soul, 
when once trusted for her nobler instincts, disowns 
the fiction." 

Then there is the spoiled child of fashion, frippery, 
conventionality, the frivolous person with " happi- 
ness " for " being's end and aim," who finds it so 
pleasant to enjoy, so troublesome to sympathize, so 
needless to think, so useless to suffer, so stupid to 
labor for any ideal end, — a sapless plant : for moral 
aspirations, desires of what is noble and just, are the 
circulating ichor of life. Even he thinks it means 
something when men speak of God; though but as 
vain words babbled in dreams, life has dim sugges- 



366 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



tion even to such an one of overruling power. But 
what can the shadow of an inanity be ? What can 
be known of the Infinite Artist, the Eternal Source 
of moral energy, the God who stirs the souls of mar- 
tyrs and saints, by a poor sniffer of the air, a watcher 
of flying clouds ? 

Such is practical atheism, rooted in moral defect. 
Yet it is not absolute even in the worst : the mirage 
nowise exhausts the power of vision. The morbid 
eye sees wrongly ; yet, while it is an eye, its sense of 
the real cannot wholly fail ; and the soul, essentially 
a seer, must at last see its own relations in their 
truth, the practical unity of the human and divine. 

III. Besides speculative and practical atheism, 
there is another way in which the universal and eter- 
nal is lost sight of, and the search for Deity fails. 

Superstitious fantasy has had much to do with 
the formation of religious beliefs. Imagination sees 
real and eternal relations ; but fancy, under the power 
of vague emotions, beclouds all relations with the 
transient and superficial imagery of supernaturalism. 
It is affirmative in form. It speaks confidently of 
God, as if it knew him intimately. It pictures him 
vividly and dramatically. Its heaven and hell, its 
ingenious schemes of fall, atonement, and final judg- 
ment, hold a relation to certain positive but ill-com- 
prehended experiences of human nature which ena- 
bles them to direct the inmost hopes and fears. 
Its symbols are realized more intensely than any ob- 
ject of the senses. Its jealous God sits outside the 
universe, watching to punish too favorable regards 
on the present life, and the neglect of his holy times, 
forms, and written word ; waiting his hour to dash 
the world into nothingness, and man into judgment- 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



367 



fires ; a God of arbitrary will, not willing according 
to eternal right, but calling that right which he 
chooses to will ; all wrath to-day, all mercy to-mor- 
row ; suspending laws, thrusting in miracle to mend 
his want of perception of human needs in making the 
laws ; changed in mood by human conduct, like a 
child ; avenging himself on insults, like an undisci- 
plined man. It makes him altogether finite ; assigns 
him a special abode, the Church ; a special form, the 
Christ ; limits his earthly appearance to one spot and 
one age ; makes him plot and reason and repent, not 
by way of " poetic symbol," but in real earnest, like 
any fallible creature. All this is wrought up by 
poets, apocalyptists, theologians, with startling im- 
agery, with brilliant and terrible coloring. Men of 
genius, like the authors of the Books of Daniel and 
the Revelation, like Augustine, Dante, Milton, have 
been busy with it ; and it has tremendous hold. 
Blood has flowed in rivers at its bidding. Men die 
with their eyes riveted on its promises and terrors. It 
built cathedrals ; it created inquisitions; it has swayed 
empires and ages ; and it lives yet, a power in the 
faith of the civilized world. But it knows not eter- 
nal justice, nor wisdom, nor essential truth, beauty, 
nor love ; not as principles, not as realities. This is 
not God. The infinite, serene, perfect One can no 
more be seen there than the sky can be seen through 
the smoke of burning woods. It is the shadow cast 
by superstitious fancy, under much enforcement from 
blind fear and self-contempt. All the texts and 
miracles, all the names and offices of the Christ, all 
the prayers and poems and structures of art or creed, 
that the church brings to the support of its genuine- 
ness, if multiplied by ten thousand, would not make 



368 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



me believe that a true picture of God. Morality 
rejects it, principles judge and condemn it. 

Then, to mount into another and nobler sphere, 
there is the speculative intellect, intuitive it may be, 
believing, sublime. Yet, as speculative, it only ap- 
prehends, not necessarily receives, nor becomes, truth 
and good. And how all apprehension must fall short ! 
How much more of Deity there is which the best 
seeing does not see than what it does see ! The less 
circle does not contain the greater. If we could take 
God into the eye, then were it greater than God. 

" Thought is lost, ere thought can soar so high, 
Even like past moments in eternity.'* 

But this is not the whole truth. Never can it be 
without some sense of the realities of Being itself that 
we reflect on the laws of our own being. This " intel- 
lectual flame which from Thy breathing spirit came " 
has not parted from its source. The beam is not cut 
off from the light that is its essence. One in sub- 
stance with eternal truth, we must have intuition or 
direct sight of the Eternal. The intellect can find 
immutable law and everlasting order. When the 
mind studies its own constant and universal processes, 
the forms of conception and intuition which make 
ii language and communion possible, its spontaneities 

of belief, that go behind the lines of causation, and 
prove its substantial identity herein with the primal, 
original, and uncaused, and that instinctive faith in 
such organic elements, wherein its certitude must rest, 
— when it studies these reverently and purely, it 
reads God's manifested word. Here is not the ques- 
tion whether it can penetrate to that knowledge of 
the essential nature of Deity, which can come only 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



369 



in the knowledge of the essential nature of spiritual 
being itself. It can at least recognize the divine 
in the immutable relations of thought and existence. 
It can know truths it cannot fathom nor define. It 
can expand with the grandeur of these laws of mind ; 
can be prompted to noble conduct by the very mys- 
tery that proves the presence within them of a greater, 
wiser, holier reality than has ever yet been revealed 
in personal act. 

I look to see the day — for this age points clearly 
thitherward, and is busy in realizing the promise 
even now — when the industrial millions shall come 
at some form of serious communion with great specu- 
lative intellects, which have really contemplated the 
serene countenance of immutable truth ; which have 
dwelt in its sovereignty, its benignity, its beauty, 
its moral and spiritual laws that transcendently pos- 
sess and guide our inmost being, and make the dig- 
nity and reality of our life ; when the clearer insight 
and recognition of these laws, that came in such vari- 
ous form to the open eyes of Plato and Spinoza and 
Wordsworth, of Kant and Fichte and Goethe and 
Emerson, and that of all those who have brought 
messages from the central sphere where poetry, phi- 
losophy, ethics, and faith are known as one, shall be 
domestic and dear — I would say biblical, if we can 
make the word mean pure help without despotism — 
to the American mind. For the speculative intellect 
has its democratic mission, in the proper sense of 
that term, which must endear it in due time to the 
practical common sense of men, as unfolding the 
foundations on which this stands fast, and wherein 
it finds relation to the infinite and eternal, and so 
to integral spiritual growth. It reveals the basis of 

24 



3T0 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



certainty on which repose our beliefs in God, in im- 
mortality, in duty, in natural spontaneous tendency 
to the best, — the real fountain, universal and human- 
divine, of all that has been wisely trusted in the posi- 
tive religions of mankind, and all that deserves cre- 
dence in their teachers, as distinguished from the 
superficial, external authority of traditional officiali- 
ties and creeds. And so it should fill the soul with a 
sacred self-respect, such as comports with these inher- 
ent original relations to truth and right, this immanent 
primacy, authority, guidance, guarantee, inspiration. 

Again we must recur to the one condition on 
which the intellect also, in the real sense, " finds 
God." This seeing is in being only; in the pro- 
found moral purpose ; in the recognition of liberty 
through the laws of noble discipline and renuncia- 
tion ; in prayer, indeed, but prayer in its one only 
meaning, — the spontaneous upward trend of en- 
deavor to know and accept, not to change, the 
eternal benignities of essential order ; in the stress 
of desire for truth, which holds all that is not real to 
be really nothing, and parts with surface for sub- 
stance at any cost ; in the will that appropriates be- 
lief into conduct with joy and power. 

To see and to be are one. We know God by par- 
ticipation, not by observation. He who is absorbed 
into a truth, an idea, a principle, to whom it is life 
of his life and flesh of his flesh, he it is that knows 
it. The passing of subject into object, what hero 
and idealist and enthusiast and lover teach us, is the 
divine form of wisdom. He depreciates the function 
of intellect who imagines that it finds content in 
reasoning about the Infinite. We know truth when 
we live by the unfailing light and love that is in it ; 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



3T1 



not looking at it as at far-off stars in the sky, but 
finding it the substance of our path and opportunity. 
We know God when life, as life, seems to us divine, 
inestimably rich in its uses and its aims. It is the 
same experience by which, and by which only, we 
know ourselves immortal. The sense of the ever- 
lasting and the sense of the divine come in together 
in the heartfelt appreciation of life, as faculty, as 
promise, as sphere. 

Always we find God, and whatever great beliefs 
mean God to us, in finding ourselves ; we find the 
One not looming vast on far horizons, but already at 
home in us, making the home fair and sweet, invest- 
ing it with native grandeur and with solemn guar- 
antees, even in the mysteries of moral and physical 
evil, of the inseparableness, the identity, rather, of all 
interests, human and divine. 

And now we turn once more to the theological 
negations. It is the ungodliness of the traditional 
theology of Christendom that in so many ways it 
makes positive and essential separation between God 
and man. Starting from this point, it was enforced 
to study Deity with a sense of remoteness far greater 
than that with which one would study a geological 
specimen, and with fears and doubts akin to those 
with which one would venture to espy through a 
telescope some blazing meteor threatening the earth. 
Calvin turns colder than ice in the process of defin- 
ing God's relation to man as the antagonism of his 
demands to our desires. To assume this radical ex- 
ternality of truth* and good to beings who must pos- 
sess both in order to the possibility of thinking about 
them at all is to shut the door in the face of both. 

Christian theology could never bridge over that 



372 THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 

dreadful chasm it assumed to exist, — man this side, 
God that side. Nothing can bridge it, and the 
atoning Christ is swallowed up in it as a feather in 
Niagara. God going out of man ends man, ends 
God also. For what would infinite love be, so 
drained of its natural object ? Infinite selfishness is 
not God. What is left for the bridge to start from, 
and what should it lead over to ? But what if God 
be here already, in the nature itself that hopes, re- 
members, loves ; that even grows by the inevitable 
lessons of folly, weakness, vices, crimes ? By what 
mysterious, unfathomable energy do we live and 
move ? The ever-flowing tides that sweep through 
human life, calm or terrible, as character shall make 
them, the mysteries of good or evil, — what but 
these are the deeps man watches and explores, till 
he finds within them that transcendent purpose and 
eternal love which he inwardly means by the word 
" God"? 

A theology that cuts God off from man and then 
tries to bring him back is, so far, a nightmare dream, 
where you agonize for life, and yet cannot move a 
limb. How it grew up, partly out of the conscious- 
ness of moral evil, in the old transitional time, when 
the world was in terrified reaction from trust in na- 
ture to distrust in human instincts as such, and 
partly out of the logical necessities of authoritative 
creed, I do not now inquire. But I note that what 
sustains it is the want of a religious appreciation of 
man's moral nature ; the failure to recognize that 
religion springs within us by force of affinity with 
God, instead of traveling by a bridge to us from 
abroad. It forgets that we can see the divine only 
by whatsoever of inherent capacity for divineness of 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



373 



thought and life there is in man, and by moral rec- 
ognition of it as our own ideal : that " if the eye be 
not a sun, no sun for it can ever shine." 

What strifes and miseries have come of these ef- 
forts to find God by going away from man ! What 
an Inferno for centuries, was the Church that pro- 
fessed to have found him by this method, and to 
have his truth packed in formulas, to be compre- 
hended best by him who should most thoroughly ab- 
jure the natural and human ! A simpler faith, a 
nearer track, a nobler self-respect, is religion. The 
love we feel, the truth we pursue, the honor we cher- 
ish, the moral beauty we revere, blend in with the 
eternity of the principles they flow from ; and then, 
glad as in the baptism of a harvest morning, expand- 
ing towards human need and the universal life of 
man, our souls walk free, breathing immortal air. 
That is God, — not an object, but an experience. 
Words are but symbols ; they do not define. We 
say " Him." " It " were as well, if thereby we 
mean life, wisdom, love. All words are but approx- 
imations ; the fact, the experience, remains the same. 
When, with Greek seer and Hebrew saint, you call 
God your Father, you have not reached a clear or 
perfect expression of this inmost unity, any more 
than when, with the Teuton mystic, you sing, — 

" God is a mighty sea, unfathomed and unbound ; 
Oh, in this blessed deep may all my soul be drowned," — 

or affirm with the Brahman and the Sufi that one 
cannot know truth without becoming truth ; that so 
far as man finds God he enters into God. All these 
are but lispings of a word that was never fully 
spoken, of a sense that none has sounded. Interpret 
wisely ; all are imperfect, yet all are true. 



374 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



The far-off God of the creeds, once near in the 
earnestness of desire and need, has become mainly a 
God of speculation, of observation through the mists 
of ages. What the framers really felt of deity was 
precisely what they could not put into form and 
hand over to churches. What really shone in 
them is known only by the light that shines in us. 
And the dead were dead past resurrection but for 
this. But this new life the best saint of old lives 
to-day, is but resurrection. The fountain of life is 
flowing more freshly in the human personality that 
now is. It is instant and immediate in these living 
powers; and we want no veil of space, or time, or 
officiality, however ancient or recognized, between 
us and the Spirit that conditions and completes the 
best will and faith and conduct, — a deeper heart 
within those destinies of life that cannot be shifted 
off, nor held at arms' length ; our real being, nearer 
than death, and resolving it into constant ground 
and condition of higher life. 

From religion in this sense neither science nor 
faith can secede. What the age rejects is a God 
that can be confined and laid up in a book ; bandied 
about in barbarous formulas ; flippantly sounded and 
measured and manipulated in prayer-meeting and 
revival ; complacently partaken in " communion " 
bread and wine ; a God who dwells apart by himself 
for a season, and then creates the world at a fixed 
time ; and of whom it may be held a great thing to 
say that he was once a creator, and then once in a 
redeemer, and will be once again in the final en- 
thronement of the same over all the souls of men. 
One cannot wonder that there have been those who 
replied, " If this be your God, atheism is better." 



I 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



375 



Such denial is probably rooted in an intense convic- 
tion of what is really divine. 

But still further : I can see that one may so live 
in the divineness of principles that he no more seeks 
them in any outward apprehension than the eye 
looks out of itself to find the power of vision. They 
are so identified with all the activities of life that 
he cannot isolate their truth and wisdom and good- 
ness in a definite form of consciousness. Such an one 
may deny that he finds God ; but his denial reaches 
only to an external and purely objective form of 
divinity ; it has the inward reality of worship, be- 
ing such a pure and full possession by the divine 
element as to allow no sense of separation, even in 
the experience of imperfection and ideals unattained. 
We shall grant him an atheist only as regards those 
current theological definitions of God that find no 
inherent divineness in principles, and make religion 
and morality rest on ab-extra legislation and monar- 
chical will. 

Nor must we imagine that theistic faith involves 
of necessity the constant or even the infrequent use 
of those terms by which theology is bound to express 
it. Alexander von Humboldt was surely possessed, 
as few men have ever been, by the transcendent 
unity — involving all we mean by order, beauty, 
wisdom, and love, and passing all possibilities of ex- 
pression — that sways the whole domain of physical 
laws. This was the all-absorbing inspiration of a 
life-time that, with unexampled industry and pro- 
foundest reverence for truth, tracked the ages and 
the spaces to unfold its meaning, yet ever exploring 
only to deepen his sense of the unexplored. So pro- 
found a recognition of the Infinite, through its vis- 



376 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



ible symbols in the heavens and the earth, could well 
dispense with the common phraseology of worship. 
And his statement that creation, in the sense of a 
beginning in time, was to him incredible and incom- 
prehensible, should not prove him to have dismissed 
religion, but to have, at the very least, cleared for 
himself the way to its profoundest realities. For 
one, I know no rational theory of science or faith 
which can make the charge or the claim of atheism 
pertinent to such a mind. 

In one word, religion nowise consists in the effort 
to frame an image, to form a definite conception of 
God, or even in the recognition of any name. To 
give the infinite over to visible form is to lose it. 
Yet the religious sentiment is nowise discouraged nor 
repelled. That we cannot so limit infinity does not 
prove our limitation, so much as would our satisfac- 
tion with our own attempts to do so. And that, 
through this very inability to be content with a lim- 
ited God, we cannot escape apprehending what we 
yet cannot confine by thought, is but the sign of 
our participation in the infinite life. Infinite will, 
infinite love, are not to be definitely imaged ; yet 
by the laws of inward apprehension, they are in- 
volved in the fact of universal good. 

If, then, we cannot see the eternal substance and 
life of the universe, it is not because Deity is too far, 
but because it is too near. We can measure a statue 
or a star, and look round and beyond it ; but the 
Life, Light, Liberty, Love, Peace, whereby we live 
and know, and are helpful and calm and free, which 
measures and surrounds and even animates us, is 
itself the very mystery of our being, and known only 
as felt and lived. God stands in all ideal thought, 



THE SEARCH FOR GOD. 



377 



conviction, aim, which ever reach into the infinite ; 
and thence, as if an angel should stand in the sun, 
come attractions that draw forth the divine capa- 
bilities within us, as the sun the life and beauty of 
the earth. God is the inmost motive, the common 
path, the infinite import, of all work we respect, 
honor, purely rejoice in, and fulfill ; of art, science, 
trade, philosophy, intercourse, — whatsoever function 
befits the soul and the day. Not the worker for the 
work's sake is dear to Him, but the work for the spirit 
of the doer. The healthfulest, noblest uses of body 
and soul are God, found and known. Found, when 
one who seemed weak learns that he is strong in 
these uses beyond his hope ; when a dark, inexpli- 
cable lot comes clear by courage and faith ; when 
experience has earned what had been praised and 
perhaps claimed before. Known, when names and 
opinions and traditions about God fade before the 
principles of conduct into which belief is trans- 
formed ; when they who are led by that spirit are 
sure that life and nature and destiny mean only their 
good. 



FATE. 



"For this cause came I unto this hour." — John xii. 27. 

Man, who has wound his iron wires about the globe, 
knows none the less that there are coiled around 
himself the bonds of a sovereign necessity. Philoso- 
phize as he may about the freedom of the will, there 
is a sense in which he knows what destiny means. 
Here the immortal, the king of nature, he for whom 
the sun shines, the earth rolls, and her ages of devel- 
opment were but preparations, finds himself but an 
atom, but dust against the wind. He is quick to 
feel his bondage, and fatal has come everywhere to 
mean inevitable, deadly. But there are necessary 
pleasures as well as necessary pains. All our grandest 
possessions are necessary. Immortality we cannot 
put off. The moral and physical laws will not let 
us sin nor wrong our souls without saving penalties. 
*i Nature is our friend, whether we will or not. We 

are apt, however, to give prominence and emphasis 
to the fact of necessity in pain above that of it in 
pleasure, and especially in the nobler pleasures that 
pain enforces. And this is because the necessity of 
pain is a thing we consciously oppose or avoid, while 
we more or less unconsciously enjoy the happiness 
that falls to us, without inquiring whether it be 
avoidable or not. Thus necessity has acquired the 



FATE. 



379 



name of fate, a word by which we convey the sense 
of somewhat opposed to us, forced on us against our 
will. 

We speak of fate as cruel, implacable, inexorable, 
seldom applying to it the name of friendly or dear. 
It stands for somewhat terrible, without heart, or 
will, or even personality ; something behind God, 
and beyond his benignity to control ; a resistless 
iron wheel grinding us to dust ; a gigantic steel hand 
grasping and snatching away our hopes. Now, if we 
had noticed that there is an equal necessity in things 
which bless as in things which disappoint us, would 
this be so? To see both sides of necessity is there- 
fore the first step toward rightly knowing what it 
means. But whatever we may think of it, the belief 
in it is inevitable. It is universal, and the nobler 
form that finds freedom in it crops out more or less 
in all religions. All nations have recognized a des- 
tiny, a nature of things, a resistless motion beyond 
and above all individual purpose, either behind Deity 
or identical with it. You find it in the far East, 
making quietists and ascetics, — an overwhelming 
despotism of abstractions or of physical nature, yet 
believed in as good for the soul. You find it among 
the Greeks, in the fable of Prometheus bound to his 
rock and torn by the vulture, for bringing down fire 
to men from a jealous Heaven, calmly assured that 
Jove, who had so punished him, could not escape his 
doom ; and saying to those who warned him of the 
temerity of his denunciations, " What should I fear, 
who am not destined to die?" You find it also in 
that grand conception of the irresistibleness of moral 
penalties, of which the whole mythology of ancient 
Greece is full. The old Greeks had a faith, as per- 



380 



FATE. 



feet as the world ever saw, in absolute justice deal- 
ing its inevitable atonements, and fated to triumph 
over all iniquity. You find it made into inspiratioa 
in the Mohammedan religion. You find it in the 
North American Indians' going back to their early- 
legends, to find foretold and foreordained there the 
destruction they saw impending. You find it among 
the Scandinavian tribes in the belief that every one's 
destiny was written in his brain at birth. You find 
it in the philosophical conception of Deity, which 
makes necessity in some sort a primal condition of 
perfection. Goodness, wisdom, justice, law, and love 
are the fate of Godhead ; not a fate imposed from 
without, but the fate which consists in the essential 
unchangeableness of a perfect nature. 

Then, you find fate suggested to impressible mul- 
titudes by the success of one leader, by the reverses 
and failures of another. " The charmed life," " the 
lucky star," "the evil genius," are but synonyms of 
the popular notion of personal destiny. It is sug- 
gested in that prophetic intuition which belongs to 
devotion and skill in every sphere and kind, — to a 
man in his true place ; all things serving his pur- 
pose ; all other men making way for him ; the logic 
of events bringing him up again and again, till some 
great purpose — the pith of the whole struggle — 
comes to pass through him, whom nobody can put 
down, and whom it is vain to try to do without. 

You see the belief in destiny slowly darkening 
over some ever-thwarted soul, and mounting like the 
dawn, in growing confidence and pride, in some ever- 
fortunate one. Everywhere it lies in wait on the 
verge of perception, needing but a few slight coin- 
cidences or intimations of real tendency to appear 



FATE. 



381 



and give order and purpose to the course of events. 
It is often vaguely enough conceived, often falsely, 
after such wise as to dishearten where there is most 
need of energy and hope ; but so universal, so nat- 
ural to the joys and griefs, the hopes and fears, of 
life that it plainly indicates some grand law which 
it is well for us to understand. 

Then, further, we are all conscious that our doings 
have unexpected issues, and react upon us without 
visible human will, as the Eastern proverb says : — 

" This world is like a valley, and our actions are like shouts, 
And the echo of the shouts reverberates on ourselves." 

The unmeaning word, the unconscious act, goes 
forth from us on a mission which cannot be calculated. 
And this, too, fascinates the mind as with the pre- 
sentiment of something essentially for its good. How 
often it is plainly so ! The book or friend came at 
the moment they were needed. A trifle thwarted 
your plan, and saved you from some great evil ; and 
when you traced back the angel of mercy or warn- 
ing, you found a wondrous convergence of events was 
necessary to it, whose import no one had fathomed. 
However sure we may be that the vulgar doctrine of 
special providences is wholly inconsistent with the 
belief in a perfect God, there is connected with these 
presentiments and personal guardianships the idea 
of a friendly destiny. An overruling guidance looks 
out of all plans and all experience upon the soul 
which lives cordially and intimately with the eternal 
laws, and does not fear to use the word " fate " in 
wonder and worship. 

Again, so are we impelled to this belief that the 
intensest consciousness of moral freedom and respon- 



382 



FATE. 



sibility cannot do it away. At the peril of para- 
doxes, we all keep it in some form or other. There 
is nothing to which we cling with more tenacity than 
to our moral freedom, and justly; but just as firmly 
do we cling to the belief in an irreversible and su- 
preme law, — in an all- wise Providence bringing 
highest ends from all beginnings. They who would 
antagonize these, who would cleave to one and deny 
the other, outrage consciousness, dismiss common 
sense, and assume the half to be the whole. The 
principle by which this fate and this freedom are 
harmonized may be too delicate for our gross under- 
standings to detect, like a balance hung in the heav- 
ens, whereof we see the scales and the fine fibres 
stretching up into the invisible, but behold not the 
beam nor its support. What then follows ? 
Doubt? No; but 

" While knowledge grows from more to more, 
Let more of reverence in us dwell." 

It is impossible for a thoughtful person to ignore 
the practical limits to the freedom of the will. There 
is the past, which we cannot recall, nor prevent it 
from making the future other than it would be, were 
a single motive or act changed. The future is now 
continually bringing on things plainly unavoidable 
by the power of man. Character is made in large 
measure for men rather than by them. Who can 
ignore heredity ? Those low foreheads, flat crowns, 
bulging occiputs, the marks of brutal origin ; those 
sensual instincts fed from the mother's breast ; those 
moral idiocies and perversities which flow in the 
blood, and turn good to evil and take evil for good, 
— we are coming to regard it as barbarous for penal 



FATE. 



383 



laws to ignore. The moral sentiment of the age rec- 
ognizes every day more and more that the wretches 
it sends to the prison and the gallows did not make 
their own characters. Then the noble qualities de- 
scend in like manner, and insure from birth onwards 
a smoother and higher destiny, in happy accord with 
life's best opportunities. 

Temperament, society, education, institutions, what 
fates they are ! The strong react upon them ; the 
weak yield passively to them ; but no man can ever 
quite cast off his past ; his present life is rooted in 
it and largely determined by it. And yet when, in 
view of all this, you swing over to the belief that 
virtue and vice are but different names for necessity, 
and that men are in nowise responsible for their 
characters, the tremendous fact of conscience meets 
you with its penalties and rewards, — the moral 
sense, never extinct, however perverted; the con- 
sciousness of power to choose between right and 
wrong, of a spontaneous will behind all motives. 
And if you follow out the belief that there is no 
moral freedom to its legitimate result, — namely, 
that evil is something organic and unavoidable, — 
you are met by a great voice out of your inmost 
soul, which says, Thou shalt never acquiesce in 
wrong; though it have taken God's name and bowed 
the world to worship, it is never to be acquiesced 
in as a necessity, but to be denounced and fought 
against as a crime. This the purity and sanity of 
your soul demand. 

There is no criminal propensity that will not, as 
long as it may, take shelter under the pretense of 
fate, claim to be organic and ineradicable ; but we 
know that the moral nature is not its slave. It is 



384 



FATE. 



in some sense free, and will feel the need of root- 
ing out that propensity, cost what it may. The 
slave of the old Stoic Zeno, knowing his master's 
belief in fate, complained to him while he was apply- 
ing the lash for his thieving, 44 1 am fated to steal; " 
" And to be scourged," replied the philosopher. 

Nor will it do to attribute the suffering we see in 
this world to inevitable forces, to Divine wrath, to 
social necessities over which, having no control, we 
need feel no responsibility for their fruits. God did 
not make men to suffer, but to be blest. Poverty, 
war, slavery, pestilence, are not his ordinances ; they 
are in large degree consequences of the violation of 
stern but beneficial laws, of human abuses and neg- 
lect which are voluntary. 

The freedom we here affirm is proved, as you see, 
by moral accountability, whose retributions are a 
sort of higher fate. And that power of choice, that 
spontaneous energy of the will, that honorable pride 
in self-discipline and the working out our own des- 
tiny, in making ourselves true men and women, which 
we ought to cherish as something dearer than life, 
must not be conceived under conditions that exclude 
this higher fate. So, then, here are the opposite 
scales of fate and freedom. They may hang from an 
1 1, invisible support and point of juncture, but neither 

must be ignored. It may not be so hard to reconcile 
them if we take large views of fate and freedom. 
What, indeed, is fate? Not the predetermination 
of individual actions ; these flow in part from the 
spontaneity of the will; but the necessity of final 
good, and of the best possible process thereto. If 
good and God are one, then the whole universe 
must tend steadily through such processes as finite 



FATE. 



385 



growth conditions, toward obedience to good, toward 
harmony with its benignant laws. You could not 
worship otherwise. Yet you must worship ; find a 
higher than your imperfect will, — something higher 
than the mere laws of science, which represent our 
ignorance as well as our knowledge of nature. And 
a God whose wisdom is insufficient to round-in his 
world and his creatures and save them, whose will 
does not dwell as the ultimate force in finite wills to 
move them to the best results, is not adorable. If 
one soul could be lost, could stand out against Him, 
through all the penalties of his staunch laws forever, 
then that soul is a God as well as he ; there are two 
Gods, or one God and a rebel whom he cannot con- 
vert. There is no refuge from the absurdity but in 
the noble doctrine of fate : " All things shall be put 
under God's feet, and the last enemy that shall be 
subdued is sin." And how is sin to be subdued but 
by making all men righteous ? " Thou sparest all, 
for they are thine, O thou lover of souls ! " This 
kind of destiny we cannot deny nor object to. There 
can be no freedom from this. 

The Calvinist dogma of election goes upon the 
foreordaining power of omniscience and omnipo- 
tence. It does not go far enough. That power to 
be real must not save some and destroy others ; it 
must affirm its sovereignty in all; and that sover- 
eignty is salvation, because it is the reconciliation 
of the human will with the Divine. 

Nor can there be any freedom from the laws of 
our own being. We are free only within the bounds 
of our nature, and only in the rightful use of it. To 
disobey that is to be enslaved. He whose passions 
stunt and cripple him, bend his forehead to the earth 

25 



386 



FATE. 



and tread his conscience under their heels, is enslaved. 
Every man is a slave who has not the freedom to do 
as in his noblest moments he would do. Does not 
every selfish caprice stand under the overhanging 
sword of a moral penalty ? There is no freedom but 
in the glad acceptance of those sacred moral bonds 
in which our health lies secured, and in loyal obe- 
dience to them, — " the liberty of the children of 
God." 

The will is free only when it is not prevented 
from obedience ; when neither fear nor hope, open 
vice nor secret snare, wanton desire nor outward 
pressure of the world he lives in, can keep the man 
from the grand track wherein his glory and his glad- 
ness dwell, — where God bade him walk with girded 
loins and hand and heart all free for natural service, 
his face glowing with fore-gleams of that immortal 
life toward which it is turned. To be right with 
your own conscience, with the universe, with the 
eternal paths of rectitude, — that is liberty. That 
finds no constraint ; it accepts what must be as that 
which is best to be. It lays its hand trustingly in 
the hand of fate, and lo, it is no longer fate, but free- 
dom. So far from freedom being incompatible, then, 
with that Divine ordination of all to good, that sov- 
ereignty over the issues of life which we have called 
fate, it is absolutely dependent thereon. Looked at 
in this large way, they are not inconsistent ; they are 
identical. 

Thus every retribution is but the repetition of 
this grand lesson. Human nature is sound and sane. 
The bands that surround it are stronger than ada- 
mant, but they are its own nerve and muscle ; they 
are health ; and no sin nor folly can frustrate that 



FATE. 



387 



which is the secret purpose of every atom and every 
law. So then we find that there are attractive, in- 
spiring aspects of fate. 

Let us but comprehend it as identified with the 
stability of the moral universe, with the omnipotence 
of good, with the deliverance of the soul from what 
soever limits, oppresses, enslaves it, with the divine 
liberty of sons of God ; let us understand it as guar- 
anteeing final success of every endeavor after a pure 
and noble life ; let it plant the heart's confidence in 
the deeps of absolute and perfect love; think of it 
as that which if you leave out of your conception of 
Providence, out of your vision of the future, you have 
no longer a God, you have no longer a moral order ; 
you have a universe of wrangling principles, swept 
hither and thither on the whirlwind of chance ; then 
you will say, Blessed be fate, and fatal will mean 
dear and divine. It is not much to the credit of 
Christianity that Christians generally imagine what 
they call fatalism in other religions to be necessarily 
a discouraging, demoralizing doctrine. The old 
Hindu proverb says, " How can he who beholds all 
things in God ever give his heart to sin ? " 

The Buddhists carried their fatalism down to the 
minutest actions and events, yet they were the most 
energetic and devoted proselyters and the most en- 
terprising and active colonizers of the East. Oat 
of the dogma that everything was fixed by fate they 
drew the duty to seek the present good and final re- 
lease of all mankind. The Mohammedans fight all 
the more bravely for believing themselves destined to 
die in battle ; and the Turks are said to have been 
inspired to intense enthusiasm, in the wars with 
Russia, by the belief that they were destined to be 



388 



FATE. 



driven from Europe. Says the Arab proverb, " De- 
spair is a freeman." It is when the stake is felt, 
when the fagot is lighted, that the martyr's fears 
perish and his soul is fired to the victory over death. 
He beholds a higher, blessed fate within and beyond 
the outward, of which this is the servant. There 
was never a heroic soul that offered itself to death 
for a conviction, down to John Brown, whose sub- 
limest words did not gather around this faith in fate. 
It is the condition of moral inspiration to hear and 
follow an inevitable command. The test of the 
greatness of a cause is this, — Does it inspire its 
leaders with the sense of God and fate ? And in 
more common paths, the triumph of human character 
is not to war against the inevitable, still less to en- 
dure it patiently or surrender to it as to a foe, but to 
accept it as a friend. Death is not conquered till 
we believe it is a natural process, inevitable because 
needful to our growth. And perhaps only when it 
is felt to be inevitable does it come to be so ac- 
cepted. It is not piety to desire miraculous inter- 
ference to ward off the allotments of nature, when 
they threaten our happiness. It can never be so 
good for any one to believe that Lazarus was raised 
from the dead as to accept death as somewhat in- 
dispensable, part of a sacred order which ought not 
to be broken, and in which God has hidden spirit- 
ual blessings. It is not piety to pray for special 
immunity from a lot which is otherwise plainly in- 
evitable, but to strive to accept it, and find its justi- 
fication or win the crown it proffers. It is not beau- 
tiful to fight bitterly and sullenly against necessary 
inconveniences, repugnancies, disadvantages, but most 
beautiful to accept them cordially, and from all out- 



FATE. 



389 



ward antagonism and defeat to win inward recon- 
ciliation and triumph. Is it not common experience 
that we never know how much we can do or bear till 
brought to an inevitable test ? It is always fate that 
teaches us our diviner part. The feeble woman be- 
comes a giant in strength when her child is in peril. 
Behold the Nation, cold, indifferent to liberty, unused 
to arms, so slow to believe conspiracy could aim at its 
life, — one rebel gun makes it certain. It rises like a 
whirlwind, a camp of a million men. These mystic 
souls of ours are sealed to ourselves. There is no 
key to unlock the reserved powers fed from divine 
founts, whence we can never be cut off, but the de- 
mands of fate. They can make the tenderest heart 
manly, and the meekest saint do sternest work. 
They can break the thick crust that covers some un- 
developed soul from whom you hoped nothing, and 
lo, a hero, a lover, a leader of men. In great spheres 
or in small, it is necessity that trains and matures 
us. The secret of success is not good fortune, not 
friends, not gifts ; it is to see that when duty com- 
mands we "go not, like the quarry-slave at night, 
scourged to his dungeon," but know when to turn 
fate into freedom. 

A final word of spiritual application. 

The paths narrow and concentrate into one. The 
word comes unmistakably, " This is the way, walk 
thou in it, for there is no other possible." Then 
with what fresh certainty we haste to greet the des- 
tiny to which it leads. What we want most is the 
conviction of a clear pointing in our faculties and ex- 
perience ; unmistakable significance in one's past and 
present ; a manifest place and function for one in 
the great work of life. Whatsoever emergency thus 



390 



FATE. 



points us to our destiny teaches us what, beyond all 
things else, we would know. And, if we love truth, 
we shall pray to know it as our highest good, though 
it should lead us through fiery trials. Here is the 
beginning of the end of sighing for broader spheres 
or brighter talents ; of useless self-discouragements 
and distrusts. The great step in life is to learn 
that God has made us to be something real, and 
to accept the commission, and say, That will I be 
through joy or sorrow, loved or rejected ; and then 
say, The world shall take me as I am ; I will not be 
ashamed of defects of nature, of misfortunes I cannot 
heal. My part shall be done freely, self-respectingly, 
gladly, whatever it may be. " Then the worst that 
can come cannot cheat me of that for which I am 
made ; the best that can come shall help it." Pride 
shall go down, and fear shall be done away, and vain 
illusions and childish mortifications and lawless de- 
sires shall flee before such reconciliations, and leave 
one in God's peace. " When He giveth quietness, 
who then can make trouble ? " 

To know that we are working with the perfect 
laws ; to mingle our wills with that resistless current 
which bears ceaseless refreshment to all creatures, 
and sweeps all movement on to fairest ends ; so to 
waste no effort and to fear no failure, to let no in- 
evitable conflict pass by till it has removed a burden 
of doubt and helped to make the sphere beautiful 
and rich, and the spiritual pulses throb with all the 
force of purposes dear to God — this is the matchless 
good that approaches every one of us in that veiled 
presence which we call necessity. 



LIVING BY FAITH. 



What word has suffered such abuse as " faith " ! 
How theologians bandy it about ; fence it off for the 
elect ; locate it away in Palestine, around a man 
and a book ; cover it in mysteries and paradoxes 
from the common heart, sense, life ! Yet the beau- 
tiful word, because it does not mean any of these 
things, but does mean all that is simple, hearty, and 
homelike, will protest, and demand to be justified ; 
will be made a syllable of the universal religion 
which transcends the names of Jew, Mohammedan, 
Christian, infidel ; made to mean what good and sim- 
ple men and women can feel and live by, — and that 
broad and universal meaning is the sense of being 
at home in the universe and in its currents of law, 
both physical and spiritual ; at home in it as the 
true human sphere ; at home in life, whether this 
life or another. 

Let us see in what sense faith is really the force 
to live by. 

I. We live by faith in our spiritual opportunities. 
Every relation and duty is as the folded bud of an 
apple-tree in a spring morning ; the soul, the sun that 
is set to bring it to blossom and fruit. Nothing less 
than our daily bread is the endeavor to meet the day 
with love and cheer. 44 All things are fruit to me, O 



392 



LIVING BY FAITH. 



Nature, which thy seasons bring," said Marcus Au- 
relius, pronouncing a manlier and more devout phi- 
losophy than the creeds of Christendom have taught. 

How often the first act of the encounter with one's 
difficulties is to throw away the hope of making any- 
thing of them ! But a prison has been audience- 
room of the stateliest thought, birth-chamber of im- 
mortal books that taught men the way to be glad 
and free ; the four walls melted before the white 
glory of celestial hosts. What spiritual invigora- 
tions may flow from failing eyes and hands on a sick- 
bed, through the noiseless room ! 

But this highest and best in opportunity is shy ; it 
will not force itself on you. It falls at your feet 
like a winged flower-seed on a dusty path, and you 
must be looking for it to see it. The spring meadow, 
full of nestling buttercups and violets, has every 
law of love and beauty there is in the clusters of 
white and blue and golden stars that lie far off in 
constellations that only the telescope reveals. What 
is space to Him who is the spirit of joy and power at 
every point of being ? Shall not a common house- 
hold be fragrant with his unseen lilies and roses, if 
the thrills of his circling spiritual seasons are there? # 
A wise man was he who, far away in China, more 
than two thousand years ago, said of the home, the 
narrowest sphere, what the New Testament never 
said, — and that is a sad lack in its teachings, — that 
if the home be rightly ordered every other larger 
sphere of life and society would flow into right order. 
God conies first and nearest where the relations are 
simplest. Trying to organize spiritual influences on 
a large scale is the folly of the sects. The Spirit for- 
sakes him who doubts its grandeur in a personal and 
private sphere. 



LIVING BY FAITH. 



393 



It is an evil hour when one begins to believe that 
there can be no great doing with small means ; in- 
deed, that there is any such thing as small means to 
a great heart and will. 

I have seen persons less affected by the glory of a 
great sunset m the Alps than some other gentle soul 
was in watching the growth of a few window plants 
and protecting them from too much sun. Think 
how Alvan Clark worked for a quarter of a century, 
grinding away in his Cambridge workshop, to make 
lenses so delicate as to secure the fine balance of re- 
fractive power which gives best vision with largest 
magnifying power, and so at last brought out the ob- 
ject-glass of the telescope that showed Sirius to be 
two revolving stars ! Ah, you have to bend yourself 
to fine apprehensions, to delicate, tender touches, if 
you are to get the vision that shall show you what 
unimagined spiritual movement is going on in the 
souls that surround you, strewn here as stars are 
in space. 

It is an evil hour when only the changes that 
strike the hasty eye pass for great work accom- 
plished, — the tangible profits one can tell over to 
the neighbor, the popular clamor that can be raised 
for the new movement, the list of names of dignita- 
ries and respectabilities, the parade of garrulous con- 
vention and conferences. It is power to appreciate 
what does not so tell, that we want, -— • that personal 
reality of character which cannot be set forth with 
popular effect, which cannot even be described in 
any human language, nor made known but in the 
communications of a noble sympathy or fellowship of 
experience. It is power to appreciate toil of heart 
and will, — the inward self disciplines, " the fitting 



394 



LIVING BY FAITH, 



of self to its sphere," the repression of murmurs 
against destiny, or passionate demands for release 
from hard conditions, the lift of the will to the 
height of unpraised, unrecognized sacrifice. This is 
perception, this is wisdom ; this, faith in unseen val- 
ues, in measurement by quality, not by quantity. 

The faith to live by is, that the whole person, 
going into any right thought or work, ennobles it be- 
yond power of circumstance to discredit or disparage. 
Greatness is not in materials, but in the user. The 
genie in the old Eastern tales came disguised as a 
beggar, or shut in a little box, or hid in a kitchen 
lamp. " Opportunity comes," said the old proverb, 
" with feet of wool, treading soft." You must have 
the instinct of an artist for the approaches of this 
good genius. You must listen for it as you do for 
the finest notes of Urso's violin. When shall the ear 
of the assembly be so intent and strained to catch the 
fine, withdrawn tones of personal character to which 
silence is the path ? When, in this roar of major- 
ities, shall we sit in the opening of the cave of the 
Spirit, and hear the 44 still, small voice" within our- 
selves ? 

A certain refinement and delicacy of the moral 
sense, of the affections and perceptions, is necessary. 
Coarse modes of thinking and judging, the forward, 
off-hand rule of prejudice or conceit or desire of ef- 
fect, are what blunt the appreciation of character and 
make social wisdom impossible. Nature constantly 
offers us the chance to revise our judgments of men 
and things, and form nobler and more fruitful ones. 
Self is an opaque shadow projected on the forward 
path to blind us. 

It is the very essence of a mere politician, for ex- 



LIVING BY FAITH. 



395 



ample, to neglect moral opportunity. It goes by on 
its feet of wool, while he is straining every nerve to 
get above his fellows. Yet only he who has learned 
to stoop, to pick up the little and lift the lowly, can 
reap the ultimate harvests possible for public men in 
this land and age. So in private life, we should not 
be mere politicians, but remember that opportunity 
comes so low down on the earth, among the things 
that promise no show, that we cannot keep our ear 
too close to the ground ; that we need 

" a thoughtful love, 
Through constant watching wise." 

We need the faith that there is no increase like that 
of the noble purpose, rooted in secrecy as a plant in 
the sod ; we need faith in our surroundings, and to 
keep despair of them at arm's length. Are we 
thinking our neighbor's lot is happier than ours ? 
What do we know of it ? The griefs of every lot 
are hid. The worst impediments to one's freedom are 
often the very things his neighbor is envying him. 
Let vague complaints give way to that straightfor- 
ward study of one's case which leaves the will its full 
power to act at least with self-respect. Let one do 
what he is not ashamed of, and many things become 
clear at once. Hard situations will not always yield ; 
but there is one thing to which the hardest situation 
will incline to yield, and that is confidence in its 
ultimate good for you, because it is the situation 
you are in and have to deal with. The force ex- 
pended by dissatisfied persons on efforts to escape 
their surroundings would often pluck the sting out 
of the incongruities of their situation and track them 
to whole hives of honey. Believe that your neigh- 



396 LIVING BY FAITH. 

bor wants, as you do, to see right, and try to help 
him ; and if he sees it in your eyes, you have made 
for each a new heart. Believe, too, it is a great 
thing to have material to work in that tries your 
better powers. We are so preoccupied with the 
other side of the globe or the bigger side of our bar- 
gains that we do not see the earth we walk on, or 
the sky that overleans us, or the trees we walk under. 
Let a good observer describe the maples in the street ; 
how many would know he was not talking of far 
countries ? We want to see Crystal Palaces in Paris 
or London : millions of God's own fall on a winter's 
day, perishing as they fall on the window-sills, and he 
who should describe one of these snowflakes would 
be thought to fable. If we could but see the land- 
scape with wholly fresh eyesight, as if none were ever 
seen before, — what ecstasy of discovery! What will 
do that with the spiritual landscape we call our lot? 

II. One thing will very much help to do it, — be- 
lieving fully in the preponderance of the good over 
the evil in human character and life. What a lesson 
in that old, old story of Jonah and his gourd ! There 
sits the moody prophet on the ground, looking out of 
his gloomy eyes to see what would become of a world 
he could not find anything in fit to live, or worth 
' li battling wrong to save. And a gourd's kindly shade 

comforts him : but the worm destroys it in a night ; 
the sun beats on his head, so that he faints ; and he 
is angry for the gourd. And the good God says to 
him, " Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which 
thou hast not labored, and which thou madest not to 
grow, which grew up in a night, and perished in a 
night ; and should not I spare Nineveh, that great 
city, wherein are more than a hundred and twenty 



LIVING BY FAITH. 



397 



thousand persons that cannot discern between their 
right hand and their left hand, and also many cat- 
tle ? " 

Here is the type of the despondent temperament, 
for which nothing genial ever turns up. But it is 
also the type of the morally blind person who sees 
none of the grand forces working in nature and the 
soul against evil, and whose blindness to the good 
without him becomes demoralization of his own pow- 
ers of action. It is as though one could find no 
better way of treating a statue than to count its 
weather stains, or the sun than to dwell on its spots. 
It is this disposition in disguise that is constantly 
throwing slurs at the moral reformer as a visionary, 
who wants to change organic tendencies, and expects 
to abolish the strifes and abuses this bad human na- 
ture is made for. 

The reformer's criticism implies the profoundest 
faith in good behind the evil. He would hold his 
tongue forever if he did not feel absolute certainty 
that the people and parties he criticises can behave 
better than they do ; that they are capable of being 
masters of nobler ground than they hold, and of being 
roused to take it. His rebukes are the highest com- 
pliment that can be paid them by a just man, if they 
are just rebukes. But this Jonah, who sees in him 
a mere scold, is the very opposite of a believer ; the 
pi'ophet has gone out of him. Religious pessimism 
is the belief that God or Satan has made the worst 
possible world, soul, nature. It has necessitated — • 
it only — the theory of an atonement or mediation, 
which is nothing but a pseudo-atonement to save a 
lost or naturally incapable race. There is no irony 
so great as to call this, and the creeds that come of it, 



398 



LIVING BY FAITH. 



faith. Yet most Christians know no other definition 
of faith. 

God suffers no moral disease to go without a cure. 
The fault is ours if we do not find it. The law of 
the soul and of the universe is one law. Antidotes 
grow beside the poison in the moral world, always. 
Suffering brings its excuse in the nobler faith that 
grows out of it, — temptation in the nerve and 
sinew ; even wrong-doing can be looked back on 
without despair, when its inevitable consequences 
" have made one charitable and wise. So when the 
soul turns sick at strife and iniquity, and one would 
flee, like Jonah, to the desert, there is sovereign help 
at hand to shame the flight. Does not He who 
makes the sunshine, the slow growths, the patient 
changes, the steady persistence of beauty and order 
through all abuses of the fair earth and air and sea, 
speak for the soul in all this, and guarantee its hope ? 
Ruskin finely says, " It is impossible to walk across 
so much as a rood of the natural earth, with mind 
unagitated and rightly poised, without receiving 
strength from some stone, flower, leaf, or sound, nor 
without a sense as of a dew falling on you out of the 
sky." Yes, if we will but stop and think, one mo- 
ment, what it means that the very earth under our 
ii feet is rolling on like a cannon ball through space, 

yet so safe and sure in its orbit that the ant can 
pile its little hillock, and the baby balance himself 
on his tiny feet ! 

But nature is not man's only foil to doubt. There 
are faculties made to master it. All the strength 
men use in clinging to despondency might be used in 
the service of a spiritual desire. When did the true 
mother ever despair of her unnatural son? When 



LIVING BY FAITH. 



399 



does the lover despair of what he loves ? We can 
hope with far more than the strength of despair, for 
despair is against our wills. The faculties are dragged 
reluctant into its service ; they react to hope, on the 
slightest encouragement, with enthusiasm. Even de- 
spair reacts to it. We are made for hope. And be- 
cause it is so native and intimate, we can make it 
that marvelous substance of things hoped for which 
we call faith. Why doubt human destinies ? There 
are credentials for the fairest future. 

Ought not every instance of approved virtue to 
count as hope for all men ? It is certainly so meant 
by the doer. I believe in this kind of " imputed 
righteousness," which is nothing else than an ele- 
ment in what social reformers call the " solidarity of 
the race." Is not the soul the same in all ? And is 
not all vice perversion of good qualities, conditioned 
on ignorance of its hatefulness ? Men do not break 
laws of God in the full understanding and conscious- 
ness of their authority and worth. Sin, in the theo- 
logical sense, is monstrous and impossible. Its esti- 
mate runs as much above the amount of evil purpose 
in the world as it does below the amount of virtue. 
The one-sidedness of the theological Jonah or pessi- 
mist is shown in this, — that, while a sin is to him 
something infinitely wicked, it never occurs to him 
to call a good action infinitely good. His emphasis 
leans, I think, the opposite way from the Divine em- 
phasis. One may well despair who has the eyes of a 
lynx for frailty and, except when he is looking at 
Jesus of Nazareth, those of a mole for worth. 

An old saint said, "Read thou the earth from 
heaven, and things below from above." And as it is 
the art of a good painter to catch the best expres- 



400 LIVING BY FAITH. 

sion, so ought we to judge one's moral destiny from 
his best biases. What else do we hold worth pre- 
serving ? And does God care less for him than we ? 
If God geometrizes forms, let us remember, He just 
as certainly idealizes souls ; sees the flower in the 
seed, the fulfillment in the promise, — or what hope 
for any of us ? What is Providence ? If it is any- 
thing, it is education ; it is treating the child in 
knowledge and goodness not as a child merely, but 
as the promise of a man. God idealizes man. He 
strews his eternal truths through all ages and all re- 
ligions, — forever making them only to be rest and 
comfort for the soul. The purity of heart that really 
sees God will have a mighty idealization of humanity 
at the very basis of its creed, and act on it in all its 
treatment of the vicious, the morally incapable and 
diseased. It is time Christendom were on the search 
for it. 

God knows how to take off pressures of circum- 
stance that stay a spirit's growth. Do you doubt it ? 
Go up a mountain : you are lighter than in the val- 
ley. Go up in a balloon : the weight of an atmos- 
phere disappears. Cannot God take off spiritual 
weights by changing spiritual climates ? How blind 
to presume impossibilities for him to save, to forgive, 
1 it to bring home his wanderers ! 

The Jonahs tell you it is "safer," at least, to be- 
lieve their way. No, it is always safer to hope for 
men than to despair of them, — safer for one's own 
power, at least, which depends on his faith in good 
materials to work in. Best not to try one's hand at 
settling the probabilities of their final wreck. 

Immortality is immeasurable chance for all. In 
its light, all strong, blameless, heroic lives — divine 



LIVING BY FAITH. 



401 



plants by the wayside — tell for the nature they ex- 
press. God has made no blunder in our spiritual 
constitution. Power is in faith. We cannot respect 
ourselves so long as we cower before the idea of any 
rights that evil has over the souls of men. Concede 
it one soul, you make your own its slave. It was 
well said, U A time shall come when we shall feel 
commanded by morality not only to cease tormenting 
others, but also ourselves ; when we shall wipe away 
most of our tears, were it only from pride." 

III. And in view of the stern facts that stand in 
the way of such confidence, we must make spiritual 
imagination a part of our most cherished life. They 
are not wise who think of imagination as good for 
poets only ; or, rather, are we not all poets ? Homer 
and Shakespeare are great only by interpreting you 
to yourself. Do they import their tenderness and 
sublimity from some superhuman world ? How, 
then, should men have found these so near their 
hearts that they have crowned the poet with eternal 
laurels for singing them? What is imagination? 
No rare faculty, but the first necessity of religious 
life. Imagination is the power which sees relations 
that lie deeper than the surface; sees more in the 
dawn than colored rays that light us to toil; sees 
mystery and gospel in every shaping law and line. 
But, besides this, imagination is the power to see the 
unseen ; to believe where senses and understanding 
fail us; to bring the invisible future, whither our 
hopes tend, where lie the harvests of our anxious 
sowing, so near and make it so real that our hearts 
are assured, our fears stilled, our sorrows consoled. 
When we see reunion with our beloved in a life be- 
yond partings, it is imagination that opens the inward 
26 



402 



LIVING BY FAITH. 



eyes. When we say, feeling ourselves weak, bur- 
dened and bound, that we live by faith, it is the 
same as to say we live by the purified imagination. 
When we hope to be what we dream it would be 
good and noble to be, it is imagination that is bear- 
ing us on its wings. It is the world of ideals, the air 
of heaven, that by which spirits grow more fair and 
blest. He who associates it with idle reverie and 
false vision mistakes its meaning ; but he errs not 
more than one who turns from it as a faculty given 
only to the few, as a power needed only by those 
who live apart from practical interests and common 
things. Oh, no ! it is that which puts joy and cour- 
age into them all, — from the little heart that glo- 
rifies your home to the mother's breast it rests on. 
Not a relation of life can be cheerful and brave with- 
out it. 



"THE DUTY OF DELIGHT." 1 



In these delicious June mornings, when the earth 
is a promise, and the heavens are a benediction, and 
our altars are crowned with the symbols of immortal 
purity and youth, there seems to come forth out of 
nature articulate enforcement of the creed that all 
worship is imperfect and unwarranted that does not 
begin and end in joy. The sorrows and conflicts 
of life seem transient amidst this evident tendency 
of nature to good. Even the social and political 
errors and crimes, that seem to undo so much good 
work and threaten fresh calamity, are alleviated by 
the thought that through all temporary blight sound 
and remedial laws abide in the earth and sky, — all 
pledged to show not only that nations cannot be 
blessed while they sin, but that the Infinite Love 
turns not from his beneficent ways even while men 
forget Him, but waits patiently their return. It is 
not moral indifference that makes his sun shine on 
the evil and the good, and the fair seasons hold on 
their joy-giving way, though men and nations tram- 
ple each other under foot, and fill the air with curses 
and groans. This unchanging serenity, this seem- 
ing unconcern toward all human grief, pity, indigna- 
tion, this delay to blast the wicked, this outpouring 
1 As preached June 25, 1865. 



404 



" THE DUTY OF DELIGHT." 



of blessings upon all, means that the atrocities of the 
earth are but of to-day, and move not one everlasting 
law from its foundations ; that Nature in patient 
prediction guarantees the heavenly life on earth. 

The lurid creeds that glower over mysteries of rep- 
robation appear in this summer glory no less than 
atheistic ; and to doubt the good issue of all worthy 
desires and hopes is a sort of willful obstinacy, not 
to say impiety. One is astonished at the perverse- 
ness which has taken the word " nature " to repre- 
sent a state of separation from God and good ; and 
regarded the world as a temptation of Satan, instead 
of an image of things invisible and eternal, made for 
aiding us in our ascents thereto. Why should nature 
be interpreted from the sensual instincts of those who 
cannot apprehend the spiritual beauty, order, and use 
which inspire it and which it suggests to the earnest 
mind ? Yet such has been its lot in the prevailing 
theologies : they resolutely cut off the Maker from 
his own glorious works, and then close up his mercy 
in human churches, creeds, and forms. 

It was one of the natural consequences of that 
gross and unspiritual use which Catholicism made of 
the attractiveness of nature that Protestantism re- 
acted to the opposite extreme : repelling and de- 
nouncing it in the name of the Spirit ; rejecting not 
only images and paintings and gorgeous ritual, but 
every drawing of the mind towards the enjoyment 
of visible things. Asceticism always succeeds over- 
indulgence 0 Protestantism, has thus, in times past, 
been a morose virtue, — morose in its creed, morose 
in its demeanor, intensely contracted in its appre- 
hension of the Divine resources for human salvation. 
For of these resources none is more needful than that 



" THE DUTY OF DELIGHT." 



405 



one which is never put into the confessions, and 
which most persons would be shocked at the very- 
thought of putting there, — joy. It is the first con- 
dition of loving God that we should look confidingly 
on his world as opportunity; that we should suffer 
and even urge all innocent joy of which we are ca- 
pable to spring up and flow freely as the very in- 
spiration of Him who is himself the spiritual Light 
and Warmth. This groundwork of religion is com- 
ing to be recognized ; but not at all through the so- 
called means of religious influence ; not through 
what has hitherto been regarded as Divine revela- 
tion, but through a larger appreciation of human 
nature. Neither delight nor even cheerfulness seems 
to have belonged to the conception of inspiration as 
given in the sacred books of the past. Religion in 
these is too profound not to be serious, yet not wide 
enough to allow the entire freedom of the spiritual 
nature. The Buddhists say of their saviour that he 
was never but once known to smile, and the beam of 
that smile irradiated the heavens. But instantly a 
voice came forth, like night, and dispelled it, saying, 
" It is vain, it is vain ! it cannot stay." If you judge 
of Jesus from the New Testament biographies, how 
incapable he must have been of anything like humor 
or pleasantry ! And yet there are no surer signs of 
spiritual ease and liberty than these genialities. 

Incapacity for them would be proof of narrow 
sympathies, not of perfection at all ; and that it 
should have been constantly attributed to redeemers 
shows how crude and unreconciled with human nature 
has been the idea of religion hitherto. It is reserved 
for a later period of human culture to recognize the 
soundness of the spiritual constitution, — the Divine 



406 



" THE DUTY OF DELIGHT." 



sanction written on the rightly regulated use of 
every human tendency. 

Savage races, indeed, rudely intimate this, in their 
childish obedience to instinct in the name of religion. 
Joy is everywhere a part of rude worship. Syrian 
Astarte and Greek Bacchus were greeted with mad 
leapings and convulsions of ecstasy. The Hebrew 
danced and sang before the ark of Jehovah. Wher- 
ever the Sun looked down on the tribes devoted to 
his worship, from India to Mexico, he beheld them 
circling his altars with dances and gesticulations of 
delight. 

In these ways, we are told, " Religions of Nature " 
are distinguished from " Religions of the Spirit." 
But there is more of " the Spirit " in this recognition 
of joy than in much of the prevailing Christianity, 
where an equal barbarism is not even relieved by the 
happiness which shows that some human need is satis- 
fied. And there is a spiritual " Religion of Nature" 
as well as an unspiritual. There is a joy neither 
ecstatic nor boisterous, demanding neither the dance 
nor the song ; not spasmodic, but calm and steady as 
the breathing of the lungs and the beating of the 
heart. There is a vital gladness, fed by the health- 
ful perception of the glory and beauty of God's 
works, and of those inner motions that shape all 
ways to good. 

There is even a settled enthusiasm in all one's 
doing and suffering, let him but know his choice 
noble and find his work becoming, and so reap his 
harvest not in the far-off issue of this work, but, in 
large measure, in the doing of it now ; and a child- 
like rest from all vexations of pride, and miseries of 
remorse, and anxieties of self-distrust, so soon as 



tfc THE DUTY OF DELIGHT." 



407 



one's confidence is no longer in the perfection of his 
own knowledge or the unimpeachableness of his own 
virtue, but in the omnipotence of the Arm on which 
he leans. Surely this is the crown of the religious 
life. 

" Is not every day a festival to the good man ? " 
asked Diogenes. 

" Neither rich furniture," says Plutarch, " nor il- 
lustrious descent, nor greatness of authority, nor elo- 
quence, can procure such serenity as a mind kept 
untainted from base purpose." 

And hear Epictetus on this duty of delight : 
" Ought we not, whether we dig, or plow, or eat, to 
sing this hymn to God? Great is God, who has sup- 
plied us with these instruments to till the ground ; 
great is God, who has given us hands and organs of 
digestion, who has given us to grow insensible, to 
breathe in sleep. These things we ought forever to 
celebrate ; but to make it the theme of the greatest 
and divinest hymn, that He has given us the power 
to appreciate these gifts, and to use them well. . . . 
What else can I do, a lame old man, but sing hymns 
to God ? Were I a nightingale, I would act the part 
of a nightingale ; were I a swan, the part of a swan ; 
but since I am a reasonable creature, it is my part to 
praise God. This is my business. I do it. Nor will 
I ever desert this post, so long as it is vouchsafed 
me ; and I call on you to join me in the same song." 

And once more, hear Jeremy Taylor on the dis- 
ciplines of this duty : " I desire you to observe how 
good a God we serve, one of whose precepts it is that 
we should rejoice. He hath given us not a sullen, 
melancholy spirit, but consigned us by a holy con- 
science to joys unspeakable and full of glory. And 



408 



"THE DUTY OF DELIGHT." 



from hence you can infer that those who sink under 
persecution, or are impatient in sad accidents, put out 
their own fires, which the spirit of the Lord hath 
kindled, and lose those glories that stand behind the 
cloud. . . . He intends every accident to minister to 
virtue, and every virtue is the mother and nurse of 

joy." 

The best men in all enlightened religions, how- 
ever differing in other respects, unite on this duty 
of inward cheerfulness. There is, indeed, a certain 
geniality that underlies all faithfulness of thought 
and life ; it might well be called the smile of God 
reflected in the deeps of the human spirit from its 
childhood on, so long as it remains true to its own 
nature. There can be no duty more imperative than 
to win this : because without it we are incompetent 
to think broadly, to act decisively, to meet care and 
trouble hopefully; without it compassion loses its 
tenderness, and charity its power to encourage, and 
forgiveness its gift of healing ; the lack of it darkens 
the homely paths of occupation and discipline which 
all of us must tread ; and there is no grandeur in op- 
portunity and no glory in responsibility, if this- do 
not welcome them. 

" The duty of delight " sounds like that prevail- 
ing commonplace of a selfish philosophy, that " hap- 
piness is our being's end and aim. 5 ' But this, as com- 
monly interpreted, means the reference of conduct to 
personal interest, well or ill understood; while the de- 
light which we are describing is not sought because 
it is pleasant, but because it is the state becoming 
the children of such a Father as God is, and the heirs 
of such opportunity as ours. And its joy is in a 
hearty appreciation of his works and ways, and not 



"THE DUTY OF DELIGHT." 



409 



in possessions of any sort. In its religious aspect it 
is thanksgiving to the Wisdom that is seen to be or- 
dering human life with infinite graciousness, hedging 
in our ways from destruction, and compelling us to 
righteousness and immortal liberty. Practically it is 
the constant direction of the mind on that side of 
our circumstances which is fitted to encourage and 
quicken us ; and as steadfast a rejection of whatever 
would dishearten our moral purpose, or waste life in 
profitless repining. It is therefore pursued in forget- 
fulness of our own interest in it. 

Whosoever goes to his work rejoicing in the vigor 
of a generous motive ; whosoever abandons a vice be- 
cause fascinated by the idea of self-control and the 
loveliness of the better way \ whosoever goes aside 
to do a kindness out of the pure love of the neighbor, 
manifestly finds the ground of his content in the sur- 
render of himself to what seems to him richly to de- 
serve the service he pays. The content is loved not 
because it is a gratification, but because it is the 
frame which suits this service. All other search for 
happiness fails, because it is really the effort to sat- 
isfy some instinct, whose very essence it is not to be 
satisfied, but to crave ceaselessly and forever. 

The miser thinks he seeks gold, but no amount of 
gold gets him pleasure. He is not seeking gold, but 
gratifying the instinct of appropriation, which neither 
gold nor anything else can satisfy ; because after all 
accumulation it remains the same instinct still. The 
dissolute person thinks he seeks wine or social enter- 
tainment, dice or licentious books, or this or that de- 
praved person, but he has these day after day, year 
after year, till the very power to execute his desires 
is exhausted, yet with no satisfaction at the last 



410 



"THE DUTY OF DELIGHT." 



more than at the first. He is not seeking these things, 
but the gratification of a sensual instinct, whose 
sensuality is not abated by gratification, but remains 
or grows a fiercer agony of craving still. And it is 
equally true that the morbidly conscientious person 
is mistaken in supposing he seeks a greater number 
of duties performed or a greater perfection in the do- 
ing of them. He shall add on to his account with God 
and his conscience indefinitely in this direction, and 
yet be none the happier. For he is seeking no such 
thing, but gratifying an over-severe instinct of self- 
judgment, which is a constant element of his life. Of 
all these aims, whether noble or ignoble, though in 
very different ways, it is alike true that they centre 
in the subject himself. They are satisfactions of a 
thirst for possession of some kind, as, in the last- 
mentioned case, the possession of merit ; in the first, 
that of the sweet sense of accumulation. They are 
in nowise rejoicings in beauty and guardianship and 
benignity in the care of One higher than we. 

It was required of those who sought for the " phi- 
losopher's stone " that they should not do this with 
any covetous desire to be rich, else they should not 
find it. We shall not find cheerfulness in any seek- 
ing after happiness as a personal unconditional pos- 
session. The instinct of getting remains unsatisfied, 
after all accumulations whatsoever. 

We talk of "our interests " as if we were very cer- 
tain that, if we could possess certain advantages over 
our neighbors, we should be indisputably gainers 
thereby. Who knows but we should be losers ? 
Even the alchemists laid it down as sure that, if 
they were greedy, they might indeed get many 
things, but never the stone they were seeking. 



" THE DUTY OF DELIGHT." 



411 



Cheerfulness is the gold that gives all possessions 
their value. And all the hoards of a life-time of toil 
are but rubbish, if care and cunning have spoiled the 
capacity for that. It comes in devotion to what can- 
not be brought under the private key, — in the aim 
to do and be the best, broadest, freest, healthfulest 
it is in us to be. It comes in the repose of implicit 
confidence in a right purpose. It comes in the free- 
ing one's self from every weight through the thought 
of an Infinite Goodness and the loving appreciation 
of its purposes towards us. 

Thirst of possession cannot bring content of any 
sort ; but how sweetly one could rest in the fathom- 
less depths of absolute Love ! 

Could we bring down the stars of heaven to be 
bought and sold; could we pack the emerald and 
amber of the sunset in our cabinets and call them 
ours ; could we take the golden bridges of the morn- 
ing, that overleap the leagues of open sea, and run 
our railroads along their beams ; could we stop the 
moon from shining when we wanted darkness to 
cover our deeds ; could we direct the path of the 
comet to suit our notions, and reform at will the an- 
cient ways of God, — then surely we should, so far, 
be despoiled of our heaven and our immortal life. 
But God hath exalted the heavens above our dreams 
of ownership, and thereby made them able to give 
us relief and joy such as no earthly thing could be- 
stow, which we can hope to appropriate and use at 
our will. And so, happily for us, will it always be. 
Something unfathomable, unappropriable, will al- 
ways remain, a temple where we can adore. When 
the mountain gorges are stripped and their solemn 
waters silenced that our furnaces may be fed, and 



412 



"THE DUTY OF DELIGHT.' 7 



the spell of holiness that dwelt in the loneliest seas 
shall have been broken by profanity and violence, 
even then the deeps overhead will endure, unpol- 
luted and unprofaned, to teach us the cheerfulness and 
love that shall yet redeem the market and the State, 
and make our possession serve holy ends. There 
will still be far solitudes of impenetrable light and 
peace, of which we shall know by faith, but which 
our science can never search nor our eyes behold, 
to show the folly not only of our conceits, but of our 
greedy self-seeking and anxious self-protecting. 

And the inward cheerfulness, which I have de- 
scribed as repose in what we cannot hope to make 
subservient to selfish uses, let us notice, is true liberty. 
It is the cheerfulness and ease of one who thoroughly 
loves and trusts all of life as meaning our good. 
This alone has what it seeks, and wills only to per- 
form. 

I do not say such cheerfulness as this is easy, or 
that it is not far less so to some than to others ; but 
I believe it is profoundly needed by all. And I am 
sure there is not one of us all but can attain some 
good measure of it, by accustoming himself to put 
away resolutely all narrow estimates of events as 
good or evil through their relation to his own per- 
sonal self. Let us open ourselves more and more to 
the comprehension of broad and liberal uses divinely 
stored in every experience. Seeking these meanings 
in our circumstances, not such as our contracted 
fears or desires would impress on them, we shall 
surely find "those glories that stand behind the 
cloud." 

What liberty there is in the cheerfulness of one 
who so implicitly confides in the instinct of his con- 



"THE DUTY OF DELIGHT." 



413 



science that this acts in him with the force and clear- 
ness of a Divine suggestion ! Sure that it requires 
no anxious balancing of evidences, he has room to be 
patient, self-collected, free in the motions of his will. 
He can direct his whole force to the instant control 
of his passions, into the service of such unquestion- 
able right. 

And what liberty in the cheerfulness that shines 
through the hard lot of many a laboring person, out 
of the resolution to ennoble labor by working in a 
faithful and becoming manner; to make it cultivate 
in some measure his finer senses, and help him, appre- 
ciate whatever is fair and good ! 

What liberty there is in a trust in the power of 
character absolute enough to be genial ; so that there 
is no need of a stiff, self-conscious air, nor frowning 
brow, in saying, when admonished to strain some 
point of principle for the sake of practical immediate 
effect, "It is better for you, friends, that I give 
assurance of my own proper manhood than purchase 
a prospect of helping the most sacred cause by the 
sacrifice of my self-respect " ! 

" The year 's at the spring, 
And day 's at the morn ; 
Morning 's at seven ; 
The hill-side 's dew-pearled : 
The lark 's on the wing ; 
The snail 's on the thorn ; 
God 's in his heaven — 
All 's right Avith the world." 

And all this looks, perhaps, unattainable in pro- 
portion as it is appreciated. Yet something of it is 
surely possible ; and out of that more, and so more 
still. It is not so high that great powers are needed 
to reach up to it. It demands no great effects at the 



414 



"THE DUTY OF DELIGHT." 



moment ; no deeds that strike the senses. Its vic- 
tories are in that silence where all pure hearts may- 
dwell, and where God knows how to exalt the humble 
and the weak. And it has one mighty source of 
encouragement. There is nothing in character so 
magnetic as cheerfulness. There is nothing that so 
swiftly tells upon the circle in which one is moving, 
or is reflected back to him so inspiringly from every 
face on which it falls, from every life to which its 
light is turned. 

The blessing which good men bestow on others 
is not so much in any special act of admonition or 
encouragement, or in any gift they make, as in the 
abiding tenor of their inward lives. There are many 
whose hands give favors and whose words send joy, 
who yet cannot reach that which gives a rarer and 
finer delight still. For there are some whose very- 
presence is a blessing, — whom to look upon is to feel 
new courage to take up toils, deprivations, cares ; to 
think hopefully of man ; to believe all noble achieve- 
ment possible, and victory sure for all that deserves 
to succeed; to see a more glorious sun, and feel breezes 
from the eternal hills where God's own might abides. 

There is no one who keeps a genial mood through 
all seasons and times but can bestow much of this 
precious gift, and that though it be only the good 
fortune of a happy temperament which makes the 
sunshine. What, then, if it be the transfiguration of 
the character by the mastery of itself and its lot, and 
the consequent inflowing of the liberty and light of 
God ! A volume this of his illuminating, wide open 
at pictures that to see is to be blessed forever, writ 
all over with the secrets of a true manly or womanly 
character. Such cheer is our living gospel for the 



"THE DUTY OF DELIGHT." 



415 



quickening of the world to-day. We shall best prove 
what God is by showing a genial recognition of beau- 
ty in all his present works, and of blessing in all 
his visible ways. We shall best justify our faith in 
man's moral power by the actual overcoming of the 
dark side of life and character, and our claim for 
the freedom of reason by the refreshing and kindly 
truths it brings us. We shall most effectually cast 
out of others the fear of death by that unfaltering 
cheerfulness which proves that the power of death is 
past for us, and the substance of immortality really 
come. We make another man's unbelief in prin- 
ciples intolerable to him when we demonstrate in our- 
selves the power of a belief in them to comfort and 
enliven us. And surely, better than all exhortation 
or warning to the timid and wavering in a just cause 
is the sight of one who goes forward to meet the 
emergency, cheerful and untroubled, saying, " This 
way only lies victory and joy." 

And, finally, this cheerfulness is efficient because 
it is spontaneous and natural. On the noblest works 
of art there is one unmistakable sign and stamp, — 
that of the delight the artists found in doing them. 
And you will find the same stamp on every good 
work of the hands, the head, or the heart. From 
this come clearness of sight, freedom of action, ease, 
delicacy, and every form of power. It is all one in 
the so-called " fine arts," or in the finer art of life. 
Whatever we do, to do it spontaneously, earnestly, 
with heart and hope therein, — this is sure efficiency, 
success, and fair issue. 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 1 



" Nothing is easier," said Voltaire, " than for peo- 
ple to read and converse to no purpose. One of the 
ancients wrote a book to prove that every word was 
an ambiguity." The epigram of a French diplomat, 
" Words were invented to conceal meaning," passed 
into a proverb. This unbelief in 'the virtue of hu- 
man speech may have proceeded from deeper unbe- 
lief in the virtue of mankind. Our age has a hap- 
pier view of social relations, and pursues mutual com- 
prehension with boundless faith in the tongue and 
pen. Yet its speculative and religious terminology 
does not yield even an alphabet of conversation. 
Our formulas, piled in the pride of classification, 
prove but bricks of the ancient Babel, after all, and 
tumble back, ineffectual, upon the heads of the build- 
ers. Never was colloquial humanity farther from 
Plato's all-important preliminary of clear definitions. 
There is no virtue in " star-eyed science " to dispel 
these enduring aspects of the truth the idealist 
sings : — 

" We are spirits clad in veils ; 
Heart by heart was never seen : 
All our deep communing fails 
To remove the shadowy screen." 

Yet must we have communion on the best terms 

1 Reprinted from the Radical Review for November, 1877. 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



417 



possible ; and so there is deeper interest than ever in 
bringing speech to judgment and words to legitimate 
meanings. We shall hardly prosper in this work till 
we reform the habit of defining terms of large histor- 
ical significance by current meanings or associations, 
ignoring their essential purport in the philosophy of 
mind. Thus, recent materialists, in general, treat 
with contempt such terms as theism, theology, relig- 
ion, as concerned with an external personal God; al- 
though these terms have always represented, at bot- 
tom, the effort to find unity and substance, as well as 
providence, in the world. The reason given for this 
rejection — that, unless words are used in their cur- 
rent meaning, they will be misunderstood — is un- 
fortunate; it being obvious that a material part of 
the current meaning itself is here rejected, and injus- 
tice done to great permanent tendencies of human 
nature. The term " transcendental " is a notable in- 
stance of the same kind. 

The popular use of this word to signify the incom- 
prehensible and impracticable is natural enough, since 
philosophers are the fathers of it, and have applied 
it to matters that do really lie apart from common 
observation. We cannot wonder that it was given 
over to Satan by the Church and the World, among 
the other dark things, — such as dark glens, dark 
plans, dark skins, heathen blindness, and " the Black 
Art," — to be kept at safe distance, with holy horror 
by the devout, and off-hand contempt by the wise in 
their own generation. For the old theology could 
not help being startled at this Shadow, writing doom 
on its walls ; and to cry " fool and mad " was but 
natural instinct. Assailed by ignorance and blind 
authority, the term has been even more con tern ptu- 

27 



418 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



ously treated by that current form of system-building 
which repudiates metaphysics in the name of science. 
On the other hand, there are metaphysicians who 
object that it means substitution of sentiment for 
perception, and assumption for induction. There are 
Hegelians who sacrifice it to a superficial etymology, 
and say with Castelar, in his eloquent essays on "Re- 
publicanism in Europe," that " in ancient thought 
the absolute is transcendental ; in Hegel it is inher- 
ent," — a distinction for which the proper meaning 
of the word in question affords no authority. Led in 
the same way, perhaps, by an etymological inference, 
not a few would consign Transcendentalism to the 
past, as a form of that very Supernaturalism against 
which it has claimed to be the one thorough and 
effective protest. Strange, indeed, if a philosophy 
whose central idea is the immanence of the Infinite 
should mean to affirm that an outside God is working 
on the world, whether by miracles or in human ways ! 
Transcendentalism is a far stronger reaction against 
the old theology than scientific induction can be 
without it ; yet there is danger that, in the very im- 
petus of their reaction, scientists shall come to con- 
found this indispensable ally with the foe they would 
destroy. This will naturally happen in proportion 
as they accept the explanation of thought, laid down 
in recent physical text-books, as " an impression on 
the brain derived from the external world through 
the medium of the senses ; " since, while the tran- 
scendentalist and the supernaturalist are at utter va- 
riance on points of utmost moment, this explanation 
is equally rejected by both. The absorbing question 
of the hour has here disregarded organic and perma- 
nent bearings, and makes one incidental analogy the 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



419 



test of affinity and the measure of worth. A similar 
illusion confounds the philosophical idea of intuition 
with the theological idea of inspiration, because both 
deny the exclusive claim of "experience" to be the 
source of knowledge, and because both are supposed 
to affirm certitude in regard to unsolved and open 
questions, and an ideal basis for what are "pure re- 
sults of historical derivation." Their common rec- 
ognition of relations with the Infinite, though under 
very different meanings of the word, is thought to 
imply that they agree in denying the universality of 
law ; and their common demand that the less shall 
be ascribed to a greater than itself, rather than the 
greater to a less, to indicate that they are alike in 
tracing the world to supernatural will. Such confu- 
sion of ideas increases with the lapse of time during 
which study has taken an almost exclusively phys- 
ical direction, until the philosophy which emphasizes 
principles has come to pass for an ambitious pretense 
of wisdom beyond what is known as well as what is 
" written ; " so that even the effort to show that it is 
simply common sense and universal method provokes 
a new form of contempt, as if much bluster had been 
made in proclaiming what, after all, is confessed to 
be but a form of commonplace. The result of all 
this is an impression that Transcendentalism was the 
opinion of a small and eccentric school, and has al- 
ready given place to " the scientific method," — the 
positive gospel of this and all coming time. 

As one by whom this philosophy was accepted, not 
as the opinion of a few thinkers, but as the independ- 
ent rationale of human thought, and who has found 
its main postulates essentially undisturbed by full 
acceptance of the results of science, I propose to pre- 



420 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



sent that view of its meaning which its history ap- 
pears to me to warrant, and to state some of its vital 
relations to the sanity and progress of mind. 

That the name " Transcendentalism " was given, a 
century ago, to a method in philosophy opposed to 
the theory of Locke — that all knowledge comes 
from the senses — is more widely known than the 
fact that what this method affirmed and involved is 
of profound import for all generations. It empha- 
sized Mind as formative force behind all definable 
contents or acts of consciousness, — as that which 
makes it possible to speak of anything as known. 
It recognized, as primal condition of knowing, the 
transmutation of sense-impressions by original laws 
of mind, whose constructive power is not to be ex- 
plained or measured by the data of sensation ; just 
as they use the eye and ear to transform unknown 
spatial motions into the obviously human conceptions 
which we call color and sound. All this the Lockian 
system overlooked, — a very serious omission, as re- 
gards both science and common sense. 

Locke was probably somewhat misconstrued. He 
meant that sense-impressions come first in oar con- 
scious experience ; his concern being with the appar- 
ent process, rather than with the real origin of our 
knowledge. He was aiming, not only to reduce to 
plain good sense the mediaeval metaphysics of his 
time, but also to combat an enthusiasm of the self- 
deifying sort, resulting from the spiritual ferment of 
the English Revolution. He had seen how easily 
fanatical ecstasies were glorified as vision and revela- 
tion, and how perilous they were to the political and 
religious liberty which he was building into positive 
institutions. His famous comparison of the mind 



TRANSCEND ENT ALISM. 



421 



to a sheet of blank paper was, I suppose, a vigor- 
ous way of repudiating these imaginary inspirations 
and emphasizing the public and common elements 
of experience, rather than the startling assertion it 
would seem to be, that the substance by and through 
which we think and know is of itself sheer passivity 
and emptiness. He rejected " innate ideas," consid- 
ered as distinct conceptions, supernaturally conveyed 
into the mind, and there preexisting, ready for use, 
independent of education and even of growth. His 
crusade against this antecedence of ready-made ideas 
as a mass of concrete details prior to experience 
seems to have drawn away his attention from other 
and better modes of conceiving the originality and 
primacy of mind. He posits "experience" as the 
only source of knowledge ; forgetting to inquire how 
the " blank paper," which could not respond to in- 
nate impressions, should be in any degree more com- 
petent to report results of " experience " without 
constructive energies of its own. To pretend that it 
- could do so would have been simply to flee from su- 
pernaturalism in one form to fall into it in another. 
Here is the unconscious incoherence in Locke's ac- 
count of the matter, as in that of John Stuart Mill, 
the more recent apostle of "experience." Yet 
Locke's own phraseology shows that his good sense 
was not unaware of facts wholly incompatible with the 
"blank paper" theory; as when he says (Book II. 
chap. i. § 4) that the " operations of the soul (in re- 
flection) do furnish the understanding with another 
set of ideas which could not be had from things 
without, we observing them in ourselves." 

Everything depends, if we would fairly interpret a 
thinker, on recognizing the emphasis given to certain 



422 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



elements of his thought by his special aim, and read- 
ing between the lines other elements, which he evi- 
dently takes for granted, as not needing statement 
at all. Locke, although a clear - headed man and 
liberal politician, was not a metaphysical thinker. 
The profound meaning involved in the fact that 
such constant ideas as Substance, Personality, Law, 
Cause, " could not be had from things without " 
never interested his practical and concrete mind, 
which thought it quite sufficient to mass such facts 
under the vague term " experience," and let them 
go at that. In this respect his example is largely 
followed in days when science, building upon " ex- 
perience," is to a very great extent absorbed in col- 
lecting innumerable physical details. Yet I doubt 
if Locke would have relished being made the father 
of the " Sensational School," and put into the limbo 
of forever decanting sense - impressions into mental 
bottles to prove that physical phenomena are the 
sole authors and finishers of man. Had he inquired 
into the distinctive origin and significance of what 
he called " reflection," he might have reached the 
starting-point of Transcendentalism. He was a keen 
observer of palpable processes ; and this habit is 
very apt to hide those conditions in mental faculty 
1 ii which the processes do not exhibit, but imply ; un- 

til, as in much modern method which passes for 
scientific, the mere succession of phenomena is sub- 
stituted for the substance in which they inhere. 
Neither the self-consciousness of mind as such, nor 
the forces that lie behind conscious understanding, 
attracted Locke's utilitarian temperament. He was, 
so far, the ancestor of that school of evolutionists 
which holds itself at war with Transcendentalism. 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



423 



But lie could not have anticipated the positive denial 
of such transcendental conditions in the next cen- 
tury by his enthusiastic disciples, Helvetius, Condil- 
lac, and others, who were preparing the French mind 
to throw aside, in sheer reaction, not only the con- 
tinuity of human evolution through the past, but 
that constant, undemonstrable element that makes 
the prime condition of present certitude. 

What we conceive these schools to have misprized 
is the living substance and function of Mind itself. 
Conscious of its own energy ; productive of its own 
processes; active even in receiving; giving its own 
construction to its incomes from the unknown 
through sense ; thus involved in those very contents 
of time and space which, as historical antecedents, 
appear to create it, — mind is obviously the expo- 
nent of forces more spontaneous and original than 
any special product of its own experience. Behind 
all these products must be that substance in and 
through which they are produced. Or- are we, as 
Taine will have it, mere trains of sensation in the 
void ; successions of thoughts without a thinker ; 
incessant flowing, yet no living stream; a process 
where what proceeds may be neglected or is naught? 
Can the knower be mere resultant of his own knowl- 
edge, call it " experience " or what you will ? How 
should there be any knowing of things at all, except 
there be first one competent to know, whose nature 
is father and fount of the act of cognition ? When 
you assert that all is from experience, have you for- 
gotten the experiencer himself? Or, if you reply 
that he is of course taken for granted, then pray do 
not immediately consign him over among his prod- 
ucts, but consider what your concession involves. 



424 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



Is he not more than all his past processes, and pri- 
mal condition of all that are to come? If personality- 
be not real, science is at war with human conscious- 
ness. If it be real, it involves powers which con- 
stantly condition experience and determine its forms 
and results. Nor can it be regarded as a mere 
product or transfer of the past experiences of the 
race, since the transmutation of one conscious per- 
sonal identity into another is inconceivable ; and 
no transfer of experiences could ever produce an 
experiencer. To say that this is idealism may re- 
mand the statement to the dictionary, but does not 
refute it. 

We affirm, however, that it is actualism also. 
Processes of phenomena come to us as forms of 
knowledge; and idea, or conception, inevitably de- 
termines form. All we can know is ideas, — yet 
not as unrealities ; it is the recognition of them as 
reporting objective truth that makes them, for us, 
knowledge. Nor can knowledge ever be anything 
else than this. And although in an idea there are 
two things, — the subject who thinks and the object 
thought, — the two are one in that common sub- 
stance of mind which makes them what they are; 
and this not in the case of secondary qualities only, 
such as color and sound, which do obviously depend 
on the mental relations of the organism, but equally 
for all qualities and even substances, since these can 
address us only in the language of mind. As Goethe 
says, " to ascribe everything to experience is to for- 
get the half of experience." In other words, no 
philosophy of human knowledge can be genuine 
which leaves out man himself, or the unknown, un- 
fathomed continent of active mind, of which he is a 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



425 



living portion. Nor can the results of such omis- 
sion be other than subversive. 

" Were not the eye itself a sun, no sun for it could ever shine : 
By nothing noble could the heart be won, were not the heart di- 
vine." 

Modern materialism makes much of the supposed 
distinction between " creating everything out of the 
subject " (i. e., the thinking mind), and " letting 
things speak for themselves." 1 But how are things 
to speak at all to us, except through the nature of 
mind? No bridge to reality is possible that does 
not start from this. And the bridge being granted, 
why should it carry over our cognitions of sensible 
particulars, and yet refuse passage to universal con- 
ceptions and principles of order, which are the direct 
and necessary forms of mental action ? Does the 
idea of cause, for instance, depend on mind, individ- 
ual or general, in any sense which should destroy its 
objective value, because proceeding from us, and not 
from nature ? By the same logic, the things to 
which we attach it are under equal uncertainty, since 
they are knowable only in their relations with our 
minds ; and their succession, which the Lockian 
would put in place of Cause, is also a form of human 
conception applied to things. And so we land in 
a phantom world, out of which the materialist him- 
self who leads us there must be the first to take 
the back-track. We may add that the doctrine that 
things can " speak to us for themselves," without re- 
gard to mental conditions, is not only the metaphys- 
ical basis of such dogmas as transubstantiation, but 
a practical opening for intellectual and spiritual des- 
potism in every form. 

1 See Lange's History of Materialism, p. 213. 



426 



TRANSCENDENTALISM . 



But these primal conditions of knowledge are not 
readily observed. Inevitably assumed in all mental 
processes, they are not to be demonstrated ; for the 
very act of demonstration is itself, as it were, let 
down from these heavens, and by invisible threads. 
They are not made palpable, like numbers, sensa- 
tions, observations, by strict limits of their own. 
They are as subtle and indefinable as they are uni- 
versal. That direct conjunction of mind with the 
real universe, by which knowledge is made possible, 
is in fact a natural relation to the infinite, since the 
universe is infinite ; and thus there is an unsounded 
element, a mystic margin, implied in all our think- 
ing, — a something beyond warrant from experience, 
beyond explanation from induction or observation, 
whereby our inferences from these data cover indefi- 
nitely larger ground than the data themselves. And 
this inevitable law of mind is the constant guarantee 
that prompts to progress as endless resource ; that 
sense of moving more or less freely, in open space, 
which belongs to the activity of reason. On this 
silent and boundless atmosphere, inviolable, imper- 
turbable, not to be demonstrated or analyzed or de- 
fined, but known in our inward necessity of tran- 
scending experience ; on this universal element, where 
no brazen firmament shuts down on us, and whose 
stars but measure an ether traversable by the light 
of mind ; on this unseen, indubitable space, symbo- 
lized in the cosmic deep around our senses, all hu- 
man aspiration depends, and the more open we are 
to the sense of it, the larger and more sublime the 
world of possibility appears. Here float all wings 
of promise and belief. Its voice haunts us with a 
rune that was never wholly silent since man began 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



427 



to know: Thou art more than thy limits in any 
premises, past or present, in any logic of the eye 
and ear. Thou art not made of senses and experi- 
ences ; they are of thee, and hint that larger life of 
Mind which thou sharest as including, transforming, 
overflowing them, — the greater that must always 
explain the less. 

Locke's system was, with all its merits, a book 
of the Understanding. It skipped all mental data 
which could not be readily utilized and defined, or 
left them in a state of helpless vagueness. 1 It dis- 
paraged whatever is involved in our relations with 
the infinite, and could have no philosophy of beauty 
and sublimity, which depend on these ; none of en- 
thusiasm, loyalty, love, and awe. It not only sub- 
ordinated the universal to the particular, but made 
the idea of the infinite the mere product of limited 
sensuous conditions, at the same time slurring it 
as incomprehensible. 2 A practical effect of this 
method appeared in the immense influence of Eng- 
lish thought on the French mind of the next cen- 
tury. Whatever phraseology of universal ideas at- 
tended it, the social dissolution of France at the 
close of this epoch showed the practical absence of 
any philosophy based on the control of egotism by 
reverent culture of the moral ideal. 

Its speculative effect led the same way. All 
knowledge being granted as coming from the senses, 
what do you know of these at all except through 
your consciousness ? This was Berkeley's inference 
of the " non-existence of matter." And then comes 

1 See, for instance, his self -contradictory discussion of the claims 
of reason and revelation (Book IV. chap. 18). 

2 See Book II. chap. 1 7. 



428 



TR AN SCENDENT ALISM. 



Hume's trenchant question : " How do we, whose 
sense-testimony is so plainly uncertain, know any 
better that consciousness tells us truth ? " What 
answer could be made to that question by those 
whose sole test of truth was in sensations, and to 
whom inherent laws of mind, necessary conditions 
of all experience and all language, and essential re- 
lations of subject to object in all thought, were too 
impalpable to be studied at all ? Here opens a gulf 
of skepticism as to the very power of seeing truth, 
which leaves man without root in realities ; and it 
inevitably resulted in that failure of earnestness in 
ethics, philosophy, and faith which, from this and 
other causes, characterized literature and life in the 
latter half of the eighteenth century. That our the- 
ories of mind lie very close to the springs of charac- 
ter and conduct is none the less certain in the long 
run, because it would be unjust to infer any special 
virtues or vices in an individual from his philosoph- 
ical statements or religious creed. And it is the way 
in which, consciously or unconsciously, we treat the 
demand for assurance of that perception of substan- 
tial truth which is un demonstrable — save as being 
the indispensable condition of earnest thought — 
that enables us to contribute to the dignity and prog- 
ress of mankind. Our philosophy, being the way in 
which we look at the world, is what we really live 
by, and goes back of our political or religious rela- 
tions. 

But a philosophic method had commenced which 
recognized these higher demands; not new in sub- 
stance, of course, but a fresh inspiration of faith and 
science to meet them. From Descartes and Spinoza 
it descended through Leibnitz and Kant, and their 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



429 



later interpreters, Cousin and Jouffroy. It was de- 
veloped in various forms by Schelling, Hegel, and 
the higher German metaphysics, and formed an es- 
sential part of the English and Scotch philosophies 
of Cudworth, Reid, and Hamilton, of the idealism of 
Coleridge and the moral intensity of Carlyle. Its 
past and present representatives are of no special 
race, and show, by their great diversity in matters 
of detail, the endless adaptability of their common 
method and the wealth of its resources. This method 
was the psychological, as the other was the " sensa- 
tional," or experiential. It began at the nearest 
point, exploring that productive force of mind which 
constructs the world out of its own laws ; itself im- 
plied in all terms, processes, explanations, verifica- 
tions, inductions, as their common substance, which 
the physicist must presuppose, even when he at- 
tempts to find its beginning among the plasmata and 
cells, if plasma and cell themselves are to have any 
meaning for him ; and which thus constructs, so far 
as they can be known to him, the very germs which 
he asserts to be its creator. The transcendental 
method found its first objective point in the uni- 
versal substance of mind, 1 — that invisible eye and 
ear implied in all origins conceivable by man ; with- 
out which preadamitic light and present sounds and 
colors are alike meaningless and unreal. " Nothing 
in the mind which was not first in the senses," was 
the Lockian statement. " Except mind itself," re- 
plied Leibnitz. 

1 The question of self-conscious mind is a different and secondary- 
one. Even in our personal experience some of the noblest instincts 
and powers seem to have nothing to do with self-consciousness, but 
to be, rather, escapes from it into a higher quality and realm of mind. 
What we here emphasize is mind regarded as the universal substance 
of knowledge. 



430 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



Analysis of thought as essential and primal leads 
to the recognition of certain ground-forms of thought 
as universal, and therefore as known only by tran- 
scending the observation of facts ; since no number 
of observations, or " sensible particulars," could of 
themselves ever prove a universal principle, but re- 
quire supplementing by larger forces of mind. Such 
ideas as Unity, Universe, Law, Cause, Duty, Sub- 
stance (God), Permanence (Immortality), are thus 
affirmed to be intuitively, or directly, perceived ; be- 
cause, while not to be accounted for by any observed 
and calculated data, they are yet fundamental, and 
must be referred to organic relations of the mind 
with truth. And for this sense the term intuition, 
if freed from loose definition, seems to be a very 
proper one. 

Of course the transcendentalist cannot mean by it 
that at all times and by all persons the truths now 
specified are seen in the same objective form, nor even 
that they are always consciously recognized in any 
form. He means that, being involved in the move- 
ment of intelligence, they indicate realities, whether 
well or ill conceived, and are apprehended in pro- 
portion as man becomes aware of his own mental 
processes. They who deny that they perceive these 
ideas intuitively mean the more or less questionable 
forms of them which at the moment prevail. Tran- 
scendentalism does not assert that these last are in- 
tuitions. It means the enduring substance, not the 
transient form. What we are to regard as involved 
in mental movement must surely be, not the special 
modifications dependent on individual or social opin- 
ion, but the universal root ideas to which all these 
different branches point. The neglect of this distinc- 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



431 



tion between the necessary conformities of mind and 
the special inferences that have been built upon them 
has caused much confused discussion on the subject 
of intuition. 

By intuition of God we do not mean a theological 
dogma or a devout sentiment ; we do not mean be- 
lief in u a God," Christian or other ; but that pre- 
sumption of the infinite as involved in our perception 
of the finite, of the whole as implied by the part, of 
substance behind all phenomena, and of thought as 
of one nature with its object, which the laws of mind 
require, and which can be detected, in conscious or 
unconscious forms, through all epochs and stages of 
religious belief. The intuition of law does not de- 
pend on the opinion that this or that order of events, 
because oft repeated, must be taken to represent a 
rule of nature or mind : it consists in that sense of 
invariability, which no amount of such repetitions 
can explain, since they only affirm uniformity so far 
as themselves are concerned. Nor is any particular 
succession of related events to be taken as measure 
or test of the intuition of cause; which concerns 
the universal idea of causality, inexplicable by any 
amount of successions, and meaning production, not 
succession at all. Nor is every affirmation of special 
duties to be laid to the account of intuition ; which 
takes cognizance simply of duty itself, of that which 
makes duties possible, — the meaning of Ought. 

An intuitive perception, however certain, may be 
of slow growth, though what it recognizes is in fact 
a necessary part of mental action. In like manner, 
products of imperfect experience and self-study often 
claim that certitude" of intuition, as such, which they 
do not really represent. We do not rest the intui- 



432 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



tion that the world must be known to us through 
universal principles on the truth of Plato's archety- 
pal ideas as real essences in the hands of a " World- 
framer," nor on the truth of modern classification 
by genera and species, which Agassiz called " the 
thoughts of God." Yet these were forms, however 
imperfect, in which that intuition was folded. The 
uncertainty of many common beliefs about immor- 
tality has led many to deny that there is such a 
thing as intuition of immortality. It is not easy to 
see how we can have intuitive certainty of the con- 
tinuance of our present form of consciousness in a 
future life ; still less of what awaits it in a future 
life. But it is certain that knowledge involves not 
only a sense of union with the nature of that which 
we know, but a real participation of the knowing 
faculty therein. When, therefore, I have learned 
to conceive truths, principles, ideas, or aims, which 
transcend life-times and own no physical limits to 
their endurance, the aforesaid law of mind associates 
me with their immortal nature. And this is the 
indubitable perception, or intuition, of permanent 
mind, which no experience of impermanence can 
nullify and no Nirvana excludes. But this is plainly 
incompetent to specific knowledge of form or detail. 
And so we attach less importance to definite concep- 
tions or images of a future life, the stronger our 
sense of the permanence of ideas, the unities of love, 
and the continuities of growth. Imagination, too, 
the open sense of our highest relations, has the same 
secret of transcending time. The beautiful comes to 
the poet at once as reminiscence and prophecy, and, 
lifted in the heavens, he sings, — 

" I look on the Caucasus, and it seems to me as if 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



433 



it were not the first time that I am here ; it seems as 
if my cradle had been rocked by the torrents below 
me, and that these winds have lulled me to sleep ; 
as if I had wandered over these mountains in my 
childhood, and that at that time I was as old as the 
world of God." 

But such foundations as these are not intellect- 
ual merely ; here is the only firm ground for univer- 
sal convictions. The grand words " I ought " refuse 
to be explained by dissolving the notion of right 
into individual calculation of consequences, or by ex- 
pounding the sense of duty as the culminative prod- 
uct of observed relations of succession. Can you 
measure by a finite quantity the amount of allegiance 
involved in that sense ? Is not its claim universal 
and absolute ? What would become of it, if it pos- 
sessed no authority beyond the uncertain foresight 
of differing minds as to results, a soothsayer, whose 
worth depended on the truth of his special predic- 
tions ? A criterion in special duties cannot be the 
basis of the great fact of duty, nor the origin of an 
absolute and universal allegiance. How explain as 
a " greatest happiness principle," or an inherited 
product of observed consequences, that sovereign 
and eternal law of mind whose imperial edict lifts 
all calculations and measures into functions of an 
infinite meaning ? And how vain to accredit or as- 
cribe to revelation, institution, or redemption this 
necessary allegiance to the law of our own being, 
which is liberty and loyalty in one ! Yet the lan- 
guage of even liberal Christian sects would seem to 
warrant the inference that it was imported into 
the human soul by the influence or example of Je- 
sus ! 

28 



434 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



" Two things," said Kant, " command my venera- 
tion : the starry universe around me, the law of duty 
within." Yet neither the infinity of the one nor 
the authority of the other can be demonstrated by 
anything but the fact of sight. They are self-af- 
firmations of mind and for mind. Kant demanded 
that ethics should not rest primarily on experimental 
grounds, but on the principle of morality, which is 
not to be limited or explained by any number of 
exclusive facts, but stands upon an inherent right to 
the implicit confidence of men. " Everything has 
either price or dignity. What can be represented 
by an equivalent has price ; what is above all price 
has dignit}^." 

What Kant did for speculative ethics Lessing did 
for theological freedom. It was his working out 
from this premise of the transcendence of ideal mind 
that made Lessing, more truly than any other man, 
father of our modern liberty to doubt. " Give me, 
O God, not truth outright, but the joy of striving 
for truth, even though I never reach that pure light 
which is thine alone." No grander word was ever 
uttered. All the free thought of our time is stir- 
ring in it. More than any attainment is it to be in 
earnest to attain ; more than any number of special 
truths is the love of earning truth, the life-task 
freely taken. Of work and play this is the tran- 
scendental ground. For of such rights of mind what 
demonstration is possible ? What induction proves 
them ? 'T is the open eye itself shining with the 
very light it sees. Liberty to doubt ! If we are 
products of our sensations, what right or power 
should we have to doubt ? But, if we can doubt all 
doctrines, so long as we love the earning of truth, 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



435 



what shall explain this but participation in the in- 
finitude of truth? Once more: Spinoza, following 
this track of transcendent thought to its universal 
form ; assuming, in the serene assurance with which 
he moves in the pure idea of God, that the percep- 
tion and participation of the Infinite is real, and that 
philosophy is thus identical with religion ; resolving 
all being into One Substance on the sole authority 
of thought, affirms it as man's real life to know, to 
obey, to love, and, so far, to become God. 

These three leaders of modern thought indicate in 
their various ways the upward drift of the transcen- 
dental method. How, indeed, should the study of 
mind in its inherent productive force fail to open 
those paths of thought which New England tran- 
scendentalists used to call man's " inlets to the Infi- 
nite " ? Of such intuition, the contents, though not 
to be proved, are none the less truly knowledge ; be- 
cause they are assumed in all processes of verifica- 
tion, and because the infinite is as real as the finite 
and as really known, — being simply that spatial 
freedom and undefined possibility which are as es- 
sential to our minds as cosmic space to stars. 

Our method of intellectual inquiry involves, there- 
fore, the highest interests of ethics, philosophy, and 
faith. In the unity of these three forces centres the 
movement of our time. Everywhere it insists on 
making this unity real, not only as direct vision of 
the laws of the world, but as ideal of personal char- 
acter. This, in short, is its Religion. Thus its 
" Way towards the Blessed Life " is conceived by 
Fichte as free obedience to immutable laws, discerned 
by the individual to be at once his own inmost sub- 
stance and the order of the worlds, with which he be- 



436 



TEANSCENDENTALISM. 



comes at one by escape from selfish individualism into 
the personal ideal, — a system wrongly called ego- 
ism; the ego being only the starting-point of con- 
sciousness in our personal sense of the true and the 
holy, opening the way to universal truths and du- 
ties. The intellectual method of our time is rooted 
in such intuition of the identity of mind with the sub- 
stance of that world which it perceives. The same 
principle has given metaphysics its basis for knowl- 
edge in the identity of subject and object, and cul- 
ture its belief that every aspiration is the human 
side of a Divine necessity. It has taught ethics that 
self-respect is one with the sovereignty of law. It 
has revealed to sympathy the solidarity of the race, 
which simply means that humanity without and 
heart within have one substance and aim. And so it 
has inspired, in Europe and America, those univer- 
salities which we now express by the words People, 
Labor, Liberty ; ideas in place of traditional con- 
ventionalities and vested fictions, as the motive pow- 
ers of society ; a divinity within the life of man, not 
outside of it. 

So with our spiritual philosophy. That the soul 
can give true report of the universe, as of that 
which is of the same nature and purport with its 
own faculties, enters in various forms into all that 
religious thought which we call " radical." For this 
word, root-thought, there is no other proper meaning 
than the recognition that human faculty is related 
to truth, not by secondary adaptation or artificial 
conjunction, but by a natural unity. This partici- 
pation in the substance of what we know abolishes 
those im'agined clefts between God, Nature, and 
Man which Christian theology has helplessly tried to 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



437 



bridge over by its equally imaginary mechanism of 
miracle and incarnation. And, finally, to this self- 
recognition of the mind in its object is due the fear- 
lessness that now animates science and scatters 
superstition with a self-confidence that no mere in- 
duction can explain. Thus, in Tyndall's fine state- 
ment, mind is evolved, not out of mere inorganic 
matter, but from the universe as a whole. This 
whole, however, is infinite, and involves inscrutable 
Substance, which, as recognizable only by mind, is 
therefore of one nature therewith. The lowest phys- 
ical beginnings are thus, in virtue of the cosmic force 
by which they exist, actual mentalities, or mental 
germs. The crude definition of evolution as pro- 
duction of the highest by inherent force of the low- 
est is here supplanted by one which recognizes mate- 
rial parentage as itself involving, even in its lowest 
stages, the entire cosmic consensus, of whose un- 
known force mind is the highest known exponent. 
Even when apparent as final fruit of evolution, con- 
scious mind is therefore, we conceive, not a new 
force in the universe, but the substance of the uni- 
verse itself under the form of individual relations and 
growth, — an identity which is seen in its capacity, 
and even necessity, to open out from individualism 
into universal truth as its natural home. 

We must, then, enter our protest against the 
treatment of this philosophy as the opinion of a 
small school of thinkers, or as a transient phase of 
idealism, in due time supplanted by positive science. 
It purports to be the rationale of human thinking ; 
its method is as organic as induction or association 
of ideas. Its postulates are involved in these pro- 
cesses, and make them effective. If true once, it is 



438 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



true forever. Conscious recognition of the laws of 
mental method is something else than an ism. If 
we call it Transcendentalism, we do not forget that it 
is also realism, as affirming objective realities and 
grounds of actual life and work. We believe it to 
be the organic basis of progress ; of every step be- 
yond traditional limits; of all ideal faith and pur- 
pose. For these, in their refusal to be judged by 
the dicta of experience, or by the strict definitions of 
the understanding, are exponents of an infinite rela- 
tion in the human ideal. The step beyond experi- 
ence is the common bond of all upward movements, 
intellectual, moral, spiritual, sesthetic. 

This step is involved in the growth of true per- 
sonality. Once discern that your experience through 
the senses is not adequate to account for your con- 
ception of the world ; once mark how you transform 
such experience by laws of your own mind and of all 
mind, and the free creative function of your being 
is revealed. And so this perception of a force within 
us which posits itself over against the limits of experi- 
ence, as its master, is what delivers individual mind 
from outward authority into free reason. Ask a 
dozen men to think of an external object, say a tree : 
they all turn in one direction, and a supposed common 
sensation disguises their individuality. But ask them 
to look at the mental process by which they know 
the tree, and each finds that the primal source of his 
perception is internal ; and the inference follows that 
its value must depend on his personal dignity and 
freedom. I do not mean that personal character is 
merely an intellectual process. But it is impossible 
that one should, in any living sense, realize that he 
is not a mere member of a mass, or product of insti- 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



439 



tutions, but a piece of primal fact and original na- 
ture, unless he is guarded and consecrated by a sense 
of the law by which he is inwardly related to truth. 
Then begins high moral culture ; then that earnest 
dealing with necessity, duty, opportunity, which sets 
the great tasks, and lifts the life through the aim it 
serves. Knowing her own solitude and self-depend- 
ence, the soul finds at once commandment and free- 
dom in the realities that front her. Self -isolation 
is the first step to self-consecration. " Gentlemen," 
began Fichte, in his opening lecture on philosophy, 
" give me your closest attention. Let each of you 
think this book. Now let each think, not the book, 
but himself." Such his first summons to the noble 
study of what Kant called the " autonomy of the 
will," none the less real for the laws of necessity 
with which it has to deal. 

It is by force of the transcendental element in hu- 
man thought that there was never wanting some 
measure of healthful reaction from drag-weights of 
the past, of self -recovery from selfish interests of the 
present. How could the constant operation of a law 
of the mind which overflows all data of experience 
with ideas whose scope they cannot explain fail to 
make prophets in every age, — yea, more or less of 
a prophet in every thoughtful person ? This is the 
resilient force that throws off effete organized prod- 
uct, supplants waste by repair, adds fresh atoms 
for an unprecedented life ; this the unexplained ele- 
ment, the mystic impulsion, in all growth. The 
transcendental law becomes impulse and aspiration. 
Stirred by its ceaseless presence, men listen to the 
native affirmations of Mind : I am knowledge, and 
the medium of knowledge ; I am inspiration as well 



440 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



as tradition ; the instant fire, as well as the inherited 
fuel, of thought ; primal as well as resultant ; infinite 
as well as finite. Hence that eternal dissatisfaction 
of idealists with the superficial doings around them, 
— with the eager fret and self -waste, the paltry prop- 
agandise of book, church, sect ; their exacting de- 
mand on human nature, which makes them, as Em- 
erson said, " strike work, in order to act freely for 
something worthy to be done." Whoso scoffs at 
their refusal to do special things that may seem to 
him imperative may well consider whether, after all, 
the best doing is not being. Let him not call it un- 
social. What society most wants is criticism by the 
courage to choose what one respects, and to renounce 
and reprove what this disdains. We reach civility 
when men recognize that one in earnest to be doing 
his proper work is more likely to know what this is 
than ten thousand other persons who would set him 
upon theirs. The transcendental impulse accounts 
not for dissatisfied protest only. It is the basis of 
interpretations of life and duty by ideal standards ; 
of the spiritual imagination, which forever confutes, 
by its far-seeing faith, the gloom and irony in man's 
actual experience. 

A constant in history, it makes the " one increas- 
ing purpose that through the ages runs." In India, 
Transcendentalism took sensualizing tropic fires for 
its leverage, and there appeared a philosophy that 
treated the senses as illusion, and an enthusiasm of 
brotherhood which gathered a third of mankind into 
its fold. In Persia and Egypt, it transfigured all 
great natural forms with inner meaning beyond sen- 
suous traditions and rituals, drawn from the vicis- 
situdes and aspirations of the soul. God, Duty, 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



441 



Immortality, — affirmations of the infinite in man, 
through all special errors, — became the substance 
of " mysteries " and awe-girded disciplines, wherein 
the noblest minds of antiquity learned divine phi- 
losophies and tasks. In Greece, when the word-play 
of sensational logic was destroying certitude in 
morals and mind, Socrates affirmed personality the 
measure of all studies, and brought its intuition of 
the Good, the True, and the Becoming to silence 
noisy pretension and confute moral unbelief. Not- 
withstanding the sophist's measure of all beliefs by 
individual opinion, what men really needed in Athens 
was to be disengaged from the crowd, to front their 
own consciousness of reality. The Socrates elenchus, 
or confuting process, was no mere bit of argumenta- 
tion, but, as its author himself described it, ''spir- 
itual obstetrics," opening to each mind its own pro- 
ductive force. His " dcemon" who was wont to warn 
him, without giving any reason, against doing this or 
that thing, was manifestly the self-protective law of 
a personality that knew its own right to shape cir- 
cumstance and to reject interference with its ideal. 
Thence came harvests for all ages in Plato's evolu- 
tion of his text that the Ideal is the Real ; that 
principles, seen directly by the soul that has found 
its real self, are the substance of the world. Our 
chief debt to Greece is summed up in this : that 
Socrates and Plato saw the world as outgrowth of 
mind, — mind as its own authority, and personal 
mind as organically related to universal being. 

In Judaea, the reaction against materialism was 
more intensely moral, — authoritative protest of 
prophet, social exodus of Essene, apocalyptic vision, 
wilderness cry. Yet the free transcendental phi- 



442 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



losophy may be read as plainly in writings of the 
Apocrypha, dating before the time of Jesus, as in 
Goethe, or Carlyle, or Emerson, or Parker. In John 
the Baptist came Hebrew summons to the personal 
ideal, and Jesus went behind Pharisee ritualism, 
Sadducee skepticism, and Essene asceticism, — final- 
ities of Hebrew experience, — to the soul that makes 
experience. To the transcendental impulse the ages 
owe his resort to self-sovereignty, his rejection of 
the dominant sources of national hope, his enthusi- 
asm of faith in the unseen, his appeal to humanity 
and to pure ethics against force and formalism, his 
assertion of infinite relations. That lofty manhood, 
though swayed by Hebrew conditions, by supernat- 
uralism, by the monarchical principle of Hebrew 
piety, by its Messianic idea and the traditional habit 
of claiming special divine commission, by that ex- 
cessive reaction to despair of the present world which 
was incident to the times, was yet so offensive to 
Jewish experience that martyrdom was the cost of 
it. But the impulse of humanity that presses be- 
yond experience is greater than any of its own hu- 
man products, and so it passed the limitations of 
Jesus to fresh material in other races and times. 
The democratic movement of that age, the grand 
Stoic and Epicurean forms of self-respect and faith 
in nature, the coalescence of beliefs to higher unities, 
did not lose their power of transfusing ages of Chris- 
tian ecclesiasticism with a redeeming instinct of uni- 
versality. 

Christianity inherited the monarchical idea of a 
God separate from man, and a contempt for natural 
law and human faculty which crippled its faith in 
the spiritual and moral ideal. It became more and 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



443 



more a materialism of miracle, Bible, Church. Even 
its essay to realize immanent Deity yielded a more 
or less exclusive mediatorial God-man ; and it treated 
personality as the mere consequence of one prescrip- 
tive historical force, just as philosophical materialism 
treats it as mere product of sensations. What suc- 
cessions of oppressive creeds and barbarous wars con- 
cerning the nature of Christ ; what lasting reigns 
of terror and superstition ; what persistent bigotries 
restrained, not by creed, but only by the political 
balance of power ; what hostility to the steps of sci- 
ence, in crude, perverted forms of ideal desire, have 
given way to the patient pressure of an organic ne- 
cessity behind them all, the transcendental sense of 
invariable law ! Against what reluctant traditions 
of experience it urges its way ! In the Reformation 
it seemed to thrust its keen edge through the old 
materialism to the free light. " What makes man's 
world is not without him, but within: not works, 
then, but faith, not doing, but being, saves." Chris- 
tianity was broken into individualities. But they 
proved chips of the papal block. Protestantism 
swelled with the old leaven of ecclesiasticism. Mira- 
cle, Bible, Church, Sabbath, external God, and of- 
ficial Atonement survived in a supernaturalism of 
which spiritual ideals were regarded as the secretion, 
just as materialism holds mind to be a function of 
the bodily organs. 

Puritanism was a further protest than Protestant- 
ism against institutional experience. It was full of 
crudities ; a pungent mixture of noble insights with 
gross superstitions, of transcendental day with tradi- 
tional night ; an uncouth Titan, precursor of an in- 
telligence and order hitherto unknown. Supersti- 



444 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



tion so ran in the grain of it that, after two centuries 
and a half of American air and space, its mediaeval 
spirit brought ministers together to stop access of 
the people to free reading on Sunday, " because God 
has given his Bible for that day, and religion will 
perish without morality." The real transcendental- 
ists of the seventeenth century were the Mayflower 
Pilgrims ; for America, the Rock of Ages was Plym- 
outh Rock. The moral earnestness of the pilgrims 
was a step in conscience, precisely like Kant's in 
philosophy, when he showed the sensationalists the 
mind-element they had left out of their analysis, and 
led the way through Atlantic deeps of consciousness 
which they had not dared explore. Did experience 
create either of these great unaided ventures upon 
unknown seas ? The Plymouth pilgrim outstepped 
the intolerance of the Puritan creed. He followed 
his undemonstrated vision of a free private judgment 
out of church, home, and civilization itself. But he 
carried civilization with him in that step of intui- 
tion ; he took up the wintry leagues of the Atlantic, 
and made them shining steps to the people's throne. 
Well might the ideality that refused to be the prod- 
uct of traditions transfigure forever that desert con- 
tinent and howling sea for which it exchanged them. 
These spaces were there to show that man makes of 
his experiences more than experience by the lift of 
his spiritual force. Mark close to this group the im- 
perial man of that day, who refused to persecute for 
belief in any form, and denounced usurpation even 
in the slayers of a tyrant. " The Lord deliver us 
from Sir Harry Vane ! " cried Cromwell, covering his 
face with his hands, when the clear eyes that never 
quailed before plot or power searched his own, — 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



445 



eyes of a great conscience conversant with the in- 
finite laws, and serenely awaiting martyrdom, that 
could transfigure with trust the total eclipse of pa- 
triot harvests and hopes. Hear that frightened bray 
of trumpets trying to drown what such a man might 
dare to say on the scaffold, — a fine expedient, on 
the theory that mind is the product of things ! With 
what divine irony the transcendental genius of mod- 
ern liberty meets this pretense of mass-power to 
abolish men because it is so very easy to abolish the 
visible shapes of men, — Algernon Sidney and Harry 
Vane at the beginning of one epoch, John Brown at 
the threshold of another, dying on scaffolds as fanat- 
ics, to ascend as ideal symbols of power ! The char- 
ter of the Republic is itself an assumption that unde- 
monstrated ideas are masters of the social elements. 
For ideas were not demonstrated, are not demon- 
strable. No data of observation can express their 
universal meaning. The data are their negations, not 
their cause ; and suggest them, as the finite suggests 
the infinite, by contrast and insufficiency. What else 
can we say of ideas than that they are the wondrous 
intimacies of the human soul with the Infinite and 
Eternal, its contacts with universal forces, its pro- 
phetic ventures and master steps beyond any past ? 
Yet John Stuart Mill fancied that Transcendentalism 
stands in the way of progress. Is there offense to 
science in our dealing with ideas, because ideas are 
inscrutable to the understanding? Let such science 
explain any one thing in nature or man, with which 
itself claims to deal, and we will lay to heart these 
complaints against the ideal. 

Justice, Humanity, Universal Rights and Duties, 
on which progress moves, are transcendental. The 



446 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



idea of a unity of races and of religions ; the idea of 
a true State, combining personal with public freedom ; 
the idea of the Abolitionist, that went behind parties 
and fundamental laws, and put a soul into a dead 
republic ; the idea of equal opportunities for race 
and sex, are all transcendental. So is philosophy, 
as a science of independent principles, based on the 
necessities of thought. What series of actual facts is 
represented by the philosophy of history, which as- 
sumes to judge the steps of the past, and interprets 
them to high uses of which they had no presenti- 
ment ? Art is transcendental, realm of refuge from 
the woes and imperfections .of the actual, — art, the 
infinite hearing of a deaf Beethoven, the celestial 
vision of a blind Milton, a Michael Angelo's cry for 
liberty from the stones of the quarry, in an age when 
the tongues of men were forced to be dumb. Mo- 
rality is transcendental, turning fate to freedom and 
limits to liberties by choosing to accept and abide 
them. Transcendental, too, is a philosophy of life 
which can offset the limits of the understanding by 
such entire trust in whatever shall prove to be spirit- 
ual law and natural destiny as needs no guarantee 
from details, and exacts no promises from the wise 
sovereignty of our own nature. This, which is as 
truly reason as it is faith, I find to be the best form 
of religion. " Take philosophy out of life," says Max- 
imus Tyrius, " and you lose the power to pray ; " 
which is certainly true, if there is no real prayer 
but a free aspiration based on the assumption of ideal 
good. How indispensable is this wide mystic opening 
and margin for all thought appears in the life of that 
chief opponent of intuition in our time, John Stuart 
Mill. Absorbed from his childhood in habits of logical 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



447 



analysis and utilitarian calculation, which excluded 
the sense of infinity, he naturally enough fell at last 
into the dismal conviction that all aims, being log- 
ically exhaustible, were therefore worthless, and was 
saved from despair only by betaking himself, under 
logical protest, to the transcendental imagination of 
Wordsworth and the prophetic moral sentiment of 
Carlyle. Nor was this all. Even against himself, he 
proves to have been a prince of idealists, not only in 
his socialist enthusiasm and his zeal for an intellect- 
ual liberty never yet achieved, but in his estimates 
of two persons with whom he was in closest inti- 
macy, — his father and his wife. So the materialism 
of Harriet Martineau, thorough as it seems, did not 
prevent her from bearing witness that the awe of 
infinity sanctified her study and her dream. 1 

And all these things are transcendental for the 
same reason that the doctrine of intuition as held by 
any school, in old or new time, is transcendental : 
namely, as recognition of the inevitable step beyond 
experience or observation by which man lives and 
grows. According to the intensity of this recogni- 
tion, the law may work in one as conscious philo- 
sophical method, in another as enthusiasm for prog- 
ress, beauty, or good. The basis is always the same, 
— an organic element of mind, which may be per- 
verted, neglected, ignored, but which holds in some 
form while sanity endures. It is assumed in every 
process of induction, and makes the particular pre- 
mise justify a general conclusion. It is involved in 
all deductive reasoning, and makes the fact deduced 
a mere fresh item under an assumed law that gives 
it all its value. It is the necessity of the materialist 

1 Autobiography, vol. ii. p. 91. 



448 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



himself, who forsakes his principle of sense-deriva- 
tion as soon as he reaches the crucial point of his 
theory of nature. Thus Lucretius, the representative 
materialist of the ancient world, explains the order 
of the universe as one among innumerable arrange- 
ments possible to atoms moving without intelligence, 
— an idea for which there is no more authority in 
the senses than for any conception ever forced on 
them by the mind of man. Even Lange, with all 
his hatred of Platonic Realism and his strong denial 
of any source of knowledge but the senses, actu- 
ally allows that " the tendency to the supersensuous 
helped to open the laws of the world on the path 
of abstractions," and that " the ideal element stands 
in closest connection with inventions and discover- 
ies." 1 

If, then, every one is a transcendentalist, whether 
he knows it or not, what, it will be asked, is the prac- 
tical worth of the discussion ? The same, we reply, 
which belongs to every question of truth or error. 
Delusion is not more common than it is harmful. 
Yet it always consists in mistaking or denying the 
very laws which are all the while shaping us by 
their mercies and holding us to their penalties. Pa- 
pist and radical alike reach their beliefs through acts 
of choice dependent on their respective mental states ; 
yet ignorance of this inevitable necessity is none the 
less truly the ground of the vast difference between 
belief in Freedom and belief in Outward Authority, 
and of the momentous consequences that result from 
it. Even if the transcendental method were accepted 
of all men as the true one, yet, as we have seen, the 
point of moment is the emphasis laid on it, the ear- 

1 History of Materialism, pp. 121, 122. 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



449 



nestness and ardor of the acceptance, the force of 
purpose with which it is applied to life. Its value is 
in determining our philosophy of culture, as well as 
in reporting a necessary law of mind. 

What, finally, is its relation to science ? The idea 
of law universal and invariable is purely transcen- 
dental. No number of experiences could have told 
us what must of necessity be ; no piling of instances 
could ever have proved that, always and everywhere, 
like causes must bring like effects. It is a step be- 
yond phenomena, beyond authority from experience, 
— a step of the same significance for philosophy, if 
not of the same courage, as that of the Plymouth 
Pilgrim ; but taken in the private mind, in the quiet 
of natural growth, unconsciously, long before it is 
apprehended. That such steps are but the results 
of the inherited experience of mankind, who have 
always employed these processes, is therefore unten- 
able, since the transcending of sensation is in every 
instance a personal act, and implies that the power 
of mind to perform it is as instant and fresh in the 
latest man as in the first. What a moment of joy 
and light, remembered forever, is that when first the 
idea of universal law breaks on the consciousness of 
a youth, and he marks it as the imperishable relation 
of his mind to knowledge ! Well may it move him. 
With that perception culture begins. It opens the 
whole past and the whole future ; it participates in 
the infinite ; it revolutionizes belief ; it recognizes 
what must condition and shape all experience. On 
this intuition the sciences rest ; by this they live and 
move and have their being ; and every step they 
take, now in this day of their triumph, this glad 
tread of man that goes to the centre of the world, 
29 



450 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



has a transcendental sanction. Clearer and fuller 
comes the sense of its meaning through their evo- 
lution, till it emancipates religion from exceptional 
and external masters, substitutes social science for 
super naturalism as practical redeemer of man, in- 
cessantly reforms tradition and recasts institutions, 
changes rights of private judgment into universal 
duties, lifts the spiritual ideal beyond forms and 
names, and will counteract thing-service in physics, 
politics, and trade by its reach after the ideal and 
infinite, after undemonstrated truth and good. This 
is the undertow that bears all surface-currents along 
its own masterful way. I fear no scheme of evangel- 
icalism to give over the State to a Church of Miracle 
in an age so possessed by the vision of universal law. 
Nor do I fear that scientific criticism will be stayed 
by all that the arsenals of superstition can bring to 
bear against Tyndall's prayer gauge or Darwin's evo- 
lution. Science can be harmed only by denying its 
own constant dependence on an unseen, ideal princi- 
ple, authenticated by intuition alone. 

A war upon the transcendental method, then, 
would simply divorce science from that sense of the 
unlimited and universal which is its own motive 
force. Science seeks to define, to analyze, to make 
comprehensible, to show the order and relations of 
phenomena, to unfold the chain of evolution from 
lowest matter to highest mind. But if it finds in 
these limits and this ascent from the physical the 
whole truth of derivation, it must either reject such 
conceptions as God, duty, immortality, or else it 
must so explain and interpret them as to exclude 
their infinite meaning. The greatest things can only 
be proved outcomes of the least by emptying them 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



451 



of their greatness. An effect cannot be greater than 
its cause. God, defined as result of evolution from 
things, is not Infinite Mind, nor can the substance of 
the cosmos be the result of its phenomena. Duty 
cannot be a mere generalization of certain observed 
successions in human experience, and at the same 
time mean unconditional allegiance to right. And 
how can a consciousness of indissoluble relations 
with being, which, as the real sense of immortality, 
underlies all crude notions of a future life, be justi- 
fied by tests which derive mind wholly from things, 
or allow for true only what can be strictly defined 
and historically explained ? To deny the intuitive 
element is, in consistency, to drop all grounds for 
these conceptions. But more : to carry out the de- 
nial is to abolish science itself. It cuts away the 
idea of law, which is transcendental ; it sweeps off 
all recognized bases of physical order, — atom, ether, 
vibration, undulation, correlation of forces, unities of 
evolution, — which are all ideal, and, however rec- 
oncilable with observation, were never outwardly 
seen, nor heard, nor comprehended, and never can 
be, and therefore, as assumed explanation of the 
universe, imply powers of intuitive perception, real 
insight of the imagination. And although these the- 
oretic forces must be verified by observation, there 
is no verification needed nor possible for that neces- 
sity in the human mind for universal conceptions 
and transcendent explanations from which they all 
proceed. 

Nor is this philosophy inconsistent with the ascent 
of evolution from lowest to highest conditions, since 
every step in this ascent involves concurrence of the 
whole, and, in some form or other, relations with its 



452 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



Infinite Substance. To hold fast this reality of sub- 
stance is indispensable to science. Its laborers must 
not be so absorbed in watching processes as to ignore 
that enduring fact which the process implies and in 
which it inheres. Now, whether mind be regarded 
as merely the last link in a chain of physical trans- 
formations, or resolved into a compound of sensations 
alone, in either case its substance disappears ; it is 
flow of transmutation and process, involving nothing 
to be transmuted or to proceed. In such definitions 
as that of Comte, — that " mind is cerebration," — 
or of Haeckel, — that it is " a function of brain and 
nerve," — or of Strauss, — that "one's self is his 
body," — or of Taine, — that one is "a series of 
sensations," — mind as personality disappears, sub- 
stance becomes unreal, and we lose all hold on per- 
manent objective truth. It seems a satire to call 
this negation of the ground of things positive science. 
I anticipate from science neither suicide nor usurpa- 
tion ; neither denial of the ideal basis on which it 
stands, nor pretense of verifying conditions involved 
in the constant relations of the mind to truth. None 
the less must special forms of conceiving these rela- 
tions be brought through its tests and inquiries to 
represent their real universality as transcendental 
elements. This obviously requires that God should 
mean, not the outside monarch of the universe, but 
its immanent law and life ; that duty should be, 
not the imposed sway of an external will, but loyalty 
to that moral order of which we are ourselves a part, 
so that our obedience is our freedom and our growth ; 
and that immortality should be, not a graft nor 
gift from without, but participation, under what con- 
ditions we know not, and probably cannot know, in 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



453 



the permanence of the truth and good we see. 
Science is freeing these intuitions of our highest re- 
lations from false assumptions of definite knowledge 
and from superstitious prescription, and thus har- 
monizing their form with the real order of the 
world. 

Mill constantly objects to Transcendentalism that 
it is unscientific, because it is of faith rather than 
reason, — an old distinction, well enough taken when 
faith meant implicit orthodoxy, and had no recog- 
nized basis in the very nature of mental action. 
The highest act of reason and every breath of com- 
mon logic rest alike on the vast assumption of faith 
in the human faculties. Every verification of special 
belief, by which scientific results are reached, in- 
volves this profounder belief ; even verification of 
these faculties has no other organ than the faculties 
themselves. If " the steps of faith fall on the void 
to find the rock beneath," not less do the steps of 
science, the postulates of philosophy, the communi- 
cations of speech. Will it be claimed that we es- 
cape these assumptions when we begin at the senses 
as the most obvious and trustworthy sources of 
knowledge? Is there any assumption greater than 
trusting eye and ear, those mysterious organs, those 
ether waves that I can neither see nor comprehend ? 
What is all our knowledge but belief? The best 
physical science swarms with errors. Helmholtz 
proves the eye an imperfect optical instrument. 
Proctor takes back his theory of planetary popula- 
tion. Agassiz declares our genera and species the 
actual thoughts of God, and then Darwin refutes 
them. The calculus itself is but an approximation. 
The elements of real knowledge are here, neverthe- 



454 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



less. But why do I believe this ? Why believe that 
the world is a whole; that matter and mind, the 
" me " and the " not-me," are essentially related ? 
I am more certain of this than of any detail of phys- 
ical science. But as for proof, do I not, in all this, 
walk by faith, and make that my sight ? If I am 
surer of my ground than an infant or an Australian 
savage, it is none the less true that the experiences 
which have thus helped me were available only 
through the constant necessity of the mind to out- 
run them with universalities which, although thor- 
oughly scientific, were pure ventures of faith. 

The transcendentalist emphasizes this basis of 
faith which science does not outgrow. He will not 
suffer it to be slighted, and for this reason, among 
others : that it is the health of the sentiments, of 
love, hope, aspiration, worship ; that it brings to our 
limitations a sense of relation to a larger, serener life, 
and repose in its adequacy. But it is a caricature 
of Transcendentalism to make it the basis of absolut- 
ist and decaying evangelical dogmas like the Atone- 
ment, where the ideal is narrowed down to a pre- 
scribed, exclusive embodiment in the name of faith. 
Its intimacy is inward, — oneness of the believer 
with the believed; so that the sentiments, set free 
by it, become nobilities of self-respect, spontaneities 
that bloom into the best sympathies and cultures, 
into art, prophecy, heroism, sainthood, into the light 
and sweetness of the world. The manifest depend- 
ence of these fruits of sentiment on faith does not 
make them at variance with science, — that grand 
corrector of extravagance in feeling and delusion 
in thought. For all its special errors, the transcen- 
dental impulse has generated a cure in the science 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



455 



that flows from its intuition of law. This is its 
own balance-wheel, its own saving sense of limit; so 
that, with its head in the heavens, teacher of the 
eternal life of man, it may walk securely, and do 
practical work under true human conditions. Its 
science is thus at once the child of its faith and the 
leader of its culture. And the spirit of our age, 
well understanding this unity, points more and more 
plainly to an ideal standard and test of all tenden- 
cies in the conception of the Immanent Spirit as 
world-movement of law and life, — transforming it- 
self, first into the physical order, then into organic 
form, then into the Person and the State ; the equal 
sexes, the arts, the humanities, the equities of capital 
and labor, the harmony of races in functions, the 
unity of the world in liberty and growth. This 
high accord of intuition and science is the divine 
espousal of the ideal and the real. The significance 
of our term " spirit of the age " is none the less pos- 
itive because it is transcendental ; in other words, 
not adequately given in any list of persons or events, 
but in somewhat beyond all these, to which they 
are all referred, not as an idea only, but as reality. 
And whoso most truly perceives or expresses this 
spirit is not only the true transcendentalist, but the 
builder of the future. 

If such is the natural development of the transcen- 
dental element in human history, it is not a set of 
opinions, and no school can be the measure of its 
validity and scope. For one, I do not propose to 
speak of it as a phase that has had its day, and is 
giving way to science. It is an organic principle of 
thought and progress. Naturally unfolding into the 
grand results we have sketched, it is yet more or less 



456 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



visible in a great variety of beliefs, which have little 
in common but the fact of being reached by a more 
or less faithful application of its method. Stated 
philosophically, it means that the self-affirmation of 
mind, conditioning all experience and transcending 
the senses and the understanding with largest and 
most vital truths, is recognized as the primal source 
and guarantee of knowledge. It is the application 
of this principle to philosophy, religion, ethics, life. 
It points directly to the primacy of personal intui- 
tion, conviction, character. Evidently every individ- 
ual declaration in the name of universal truth in- 
volves it, whatever its results, because it is a step 
beyond the data of experience. But, like all princi- 
ples, it has its ideal, founded on its conscious culture 
and higher uses, which tests and judges conduct. He 
who freely uses the private judgment to measure all 
outward authority presumes the sufficiency of an in- 
ward light. But he is true to the ideal principle of 
Transcendentalism only in so far as he really main- 
tains the primacy of personal mind, instead of so 
carrying out the right of private judgment as to sink 
that principle or pervert its meaning. Many a loud 
protest against traditions and institutions has been 
passive obedience to a far more powerful and brutal 
despotism, a push of sensual tides submerging the 
soul ; not the sanity of intuition, but the insanity of 
desires. On the other hand, a poetic nature may be 
disposed to uphold the institutions in which his feel- 
ings have found culture, yet be, as Wordsworth was, 
completely transcendental, because taking these in- 
stitutions simply as related to a spiritual ideal, which 
regenerated literature by its appeal to the beautiful 
and true, as "the soul that rises with us, our life's 
star." 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



457 



In their worship of external authority the Protest- 
ant sects have almost seemed to vie in showing how 
little might be kept of the transcendental principle, 
while claiming special advocacy of the right of pri- 
vate judgment. And in the great family of appel- 
lants to the " Inward Light," — mystics, rational- 
ists, Quakers, skeptics, ascetics, free religionists, with 
all unclassified persons of independent and earnest 
mind, — the intellectual diversities are doubtless not 
greater than the differences of degree in which their 
claim of inward light really represents transcendental 
freedom and progress. 

Naturally the main test of fidelity to this principle 
is one's relation to the moral laws and spiritual forces. 
Here, again, we must recognize its ideal. The law 
in his nature, expressed not in articles, rituals, or 
Bible, not in multitude nor mediator nor specific 
religious name ; this light of his faculties, self-shin- 
ing with their revelation of the infinity of truth, and 
the absoluteness of duty, and their participation in 
that which they know to be eternal ; this transcen- 
dence to imperfect experience and understanding, is 
the consecration of his life, his guarantee of ideal 
convictions, of broad and beautiful beliefs. And life 
should seem inestimable, and in this sense at least 
immortal and divine, through what it is thus proved 
competent to hold, of enthusiasm for the best cul- 
tures, and service of the truth and right that are yet 
to rule. 

In view of this personal ideal there is a dark side 
to our social experience. Modern civilization be- 
comes more and more exclusively a life of crowd- 
ing and concretion. Its solidarity stifles the human 
atoms, who have been strenuously abolishing space, 



458 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



till the world's immeasurable detail presses directly 
upon every brain and heart. The intense magnet- 
ism of social machinery pushes every demand into 
unlimited expectation, and gives our vices a force as 
organic as ever was in State or Church. Corrup- 
tion wields the resources of recognized method in its 
management of public and private interests, and has 
its representative men in every line, who become 
conspicuous solely because masters in the vulgar arts 
acknowledged to hold the key to success. An un- 
bounded craving for self-gratification is fostered by 
the mechanism of our culture, ignoring all differ- 
ences of material in its training of racers for a com- 
mon goal. Competition in luxury drives us on in its 
whirl of dishonest debt and wasteful apery, till you 
shall barely find a few who dare live with honor, 
bringing up sons and daughters in just loyalties and 
simple tastes. Is such demoralization beginning to 
warn us, in the full tide of organized self-govern- 
ment, of a fatal incapacity of moral freedom and 
practical self-control ? 

What shall stay us on such downward tracks? 
Not, I think, a theory of science, that treats person- 
ality as mere run of phenomena, and its claim to be 
an immediate source of knowledge as a mere fiction 
of the imagination. This is but an outgrowth of 
these very degeneracies, and we shall look in vain for 
healing to the destroyer of our health. Successful 
trade, gigantic production, school machinery without 
a germ of individuality or self-reliance in its pur- 
pose, are plainly the forces to be mastered, not the 
gods to be invoked. Spread of national vanity, grasp 
of the continent and the isles, are but symptoms of 
our disease. We want the personal ideal, inward 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



459 



dignities, a self-respect and self-reliance that require 
new starting-points in the philosophy of culture. We 
want training in principles instead of dissipation on 
details ; conviction that the world reflects the mind, 
and that the quality of our mind determines the 
value of our world ; respect for the perception of 
moral order, for the sweep of law that transcends the 
bounded premise ; the insight of prophecy that out- 
runs experience ; the freedom of the ideal to judge 
outward prescriptions, and reshape the concrete 
world to fresh necessities of growing reason. We 
need to react from that excessive reaction against 
unscientific idealism, which ignores all inward condi- 
tions of knowledge, and buries itself in the mere ex- 
ternal object or sensation as source of all. And the 
drift of this current materialism towards resolving 
human personality into a delusion, and defining man 
and the world as mere run of phenomena, to say 
nothing of a pessimistic irony, must be met by em- 
phasizing substance, and the real conjunction of the 
conscious mind with what is permanent and univer- 
sal. In our zeal for teaching everything, we are for- 
getting that the learner is more and greater than all 
he can learn, and that for him the first of all prac- 
tical needs is a philosophy of culture that shall deter- 
mine his methods and aims. In fine, to save us from 
base politics and selfish relations in trade and labor, 
we need the constant inspiration of ideal public 
duties, whereof we have hitherto had perhaps only 
one form ; represented by the anti-slavery movement, 
and its school of moral culture, friendship, self-ac- 
countability, and life-long sacrifice, — an education 
we now bitterly miss, and are destined to miss till 
we have raised to like levels of principle and convic- 



460 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 



tion such transcendental objects as the rights and 
duties of labor, the union of equal opportunity with 
difference of function and honor to the best, and full 
liberty in the conscience to think, to deny, and to 
believe. 



APPENDIX. 



The following appreciative notice by Prof. E. J. Eitel, 
of Tubingen and Hongkong, bearing the date of April 21, 
1882, appeared in the China Review : ■ — 

In Memoriam. — Whosoever has read Samuel Johnson's 
great work on China will no doubt learn with regret of the 
death of the author of Oriental Religions and their Relation to 
Universal Religion. Samuel Johnson died on 19th February- 
last, at North Andover, Massachusetts, leaving the last volume 
of his work, that on Persia, unfinished. 

Though Samuel Johnson's preeminent merits, as the histo- 
rian of Universal Religion, have hitherto met with but scanty- 
recognition in his own country, I have no doubt he will eventu- 
ally be estimated at his true value as one of the ripest of Amer- 
ican scholars. His volume on the Religions of India, which 
appeared in 1872, has been highly praised by Orientalists of 
European fame ; and I make bold to say that his great work on 
China, published in 1877, and reviewed by myself in Vol. VI. 
(pp. 425-428) of the China Review, will commend itself to all 
Sinologists as a most exhaustive, lucid, and correct estimate of 
Chinese thought and life. If it is due to Edkins to say that he 
has established for China her true place in philology, it is due 
to Samuel Johnson to acknowledge that he has fixed China's 
place in the history of Universal Religion. 

Samuel Johnson approached the study of Oriental Religions 
with a mind specially adapted to appreciate their true value, 
because it was a mind specially scientific whilst essentially relig- 
ious, and at the same time elevated far above the narrow sym- 
pathies of sectarian religion. 

Samuel Johnson prosecuted his studies with an energy and 



462 



APPENDIX. 



zeal inspired by an ardent and fearless love of truth in any 
form and by a sincere worship of the universal in religion. In 
the course of years, spent in the most extensive reading and re- 
search into all the available sources of information, he surveyed 
the progress of the religious feeling and thought of mankind, 
in its evolution from the rude Shamanism of barbaric ages to 
the refined dogmatism of the present day. He saw in this nat- 
ural process of evolution a progressive education of humanity, 
through man's own relations with the Deity. He searched out 
the laws of this religious evolution and involution, of its prog- 
ress and reaction, and found in them a key of astonishing ef- 
ficacy in unlocking the mysteries of all creeds, and in finding 
for all the most important transitions in the history of Universal 
Religion their natural explanation. He gathered up all the 
ideal elements embodied in Oriental Religions, and noted down 
all valid forms of religious thought and life to which the one 
spiritual nature, common to the best men of all countries and 
all ages, ever gave utterance in the East. Thus Samuel John- 
son demonstrated most forcibly that the history of all religions 
reveals to the unprejudiced inquirer a universal identity of the 
religious feeling and thought of all ages; a universal harmony 
of religious instincts and insights, of religious demands and 
supplies ; a cosmic harmony based on a substantial unity of God 
and Man underlying all outward alienations. 

If I add that Samuel Johnson's method of inquiry was 
thoroughly scientific, that his sympathies were absolutely cos- 
mopolitan whilst essentially religious, and that he laid down the 
results of his most painstaking inquiries in a style which carries 
the reader right along, fascinating as it is by its vivacity and 
sparkling lucidity, whilst intensely suggestive and instructive, 1 
can but wonder that his countrymen in the United States did 
not give him that place among the foremost writers, thinkers, 
and scholars of the present day which he so fully deserves. 

But perhaps Samuel Johnson was too fearless a lover of all 
that is true and good in any form and in any nation, too consist- 
ent in the application of his scientific method of inquiry, too 
outspoken in his trenchant estimate of the practical value of 
Christian theology, Christian morality, and Christian civiliza- 
tion, to have escaped the unintentional sin of running counter 
to the principal tenets of many influential sections among his 



APPENDIX. 



463 



countrymen, who were naturally roused thereby into well-meant 
antipathy and antagonism. 

In his comprehensive view of the progress of Universal Re- 
ligion, Samuel Johnson gave to Christianity no exceptional 
place, but included it as but one of the steps in the universal 
progress of religion. So far he was right enough. But in- 
stead of recognizing in the ideal of the Christian religion the 
final keystone of the whole edifice of Universal Religion, he 
allowed his experimental knowledge of practical Christianity 
to warp his judgment of its ideal value. On the other hand, 
having not come into practical contact with the living realiza- 
tion of Confucianism, Buddhism, or Indian religions, his esti- 
mate of these religions became unconsciously higher. Moreover, 
there was to him no such thing as revealed religion in distinc- 
tion from natural religion. In comparing the practical value of 
all religions, he saw, therefore, no reason to give to the Christian 
religion, whose morals and civilization he had found practically 
inferior, the palm of preference. He boldly compared Confu- 
cius, Buddha, and Jesus Christ, and calmly pronounced Con- 
fucius, to his thinking, the greatest of the three. Shocking as 
this must be to every Christian mind, even greater danger to 
the interests of sectarian Christianity was probably seen to 
arise from the general tendency of Samuel Johnson's researches, 
because such a provokingly independent search for the universal 
in religion, viewed in the light of the results accumulated in 
Samuel Johnson's work, clearly tends to encourage a general 
exodus from all distinctive religions, and a migration, through 
years of wandering in faithless and creedless deserts, to a prob- 
lematical Canaan of Universal Religion. 

As his fearless independence of research and his trenchant 
criticism of modern Christianity must have brought Samuel 
Johnson, in spite of his intense religionism, into bad odor with 
almost all religionists in the United States, so his utter want of 
national bias and his outspoken admiration of all that is good 
in the Chinese people must have diverted from him the sympa- 
thies of most American politicians. The value Samuel Johnson 
puts on the peculiar civilization of China; the excuses he found 
for the barbarism interwoven in its structure; the charming de- 
scriptions he gives of the alacrity, of the social constructive- 
ness, the competitive ardor, the economic methods, and the 



464 



APPENDIX. 



assimilative power of the Chinese people, placed his researches 
out of tune with the politics of the day. What reception 
would he have received in California, or even in the United 
States Congress, who dared to quote the following sentence, for 
instance, from Samuel Johnson's work referring to the immi- 
gration of Chinese into the States ? " Their immigration is a 
national blessing, not only as productive force, but as stimulant 
to the morals of industry. Their cheap labor is a test of our 
theoretic and practical liberty, their inaptness for Christianiza- 
tion our school of religious universality." Even the missionary 
party, the best informed defenders of Chinese interests in the 
United States, would naturally fight shy of a man like Samuel 
Johnson, who pronounced their present labors in China a failure, 
and fearlessly stated his belief that " the mission of Christianity 
to the heathen is not only for the overthrow of many of their 
religious peculiarities, but quite as truly for the essential modifi- 
cation of its own." 

Although, therefore, Samuel Johnson's few admirers must, 
for the present, remain satisfied with but little sympathy and 
scanty justice on the part of American readers, I have no 
doubt that a time will come when Samuel Johnson will be rec- 
ognized in his own country as one of their greatest thinkers 
and scholars, and when it will be acknowledged that, though 
his estimate of Christianity was erroneous, he put a conscien- 
tious and just value on all other religions. What Heine said 
of Herder is equally true of Samuel Johnson, namely, that, 
instead of. inquisitorially judging nations according to the 
degree of their faith, he regarded humanity as a harp in the 
hands of a great master, and each people a special string, help- 
ing to the harmony of the whole. Restat in pace. 



APPENDIX. 



465 



LIST OF MR. JOHNSON'S PRINTED WORKS. 

The Worship of Jesus. Boston, 1868. 92 pp., sm. 8vo, 
cloth. 

Oriental Religions and their Relation to Universal Religion : 
India. Boston, 1873. vi, 802 pp., 8vo, cloth. 

Oriental Religions and their Relation to Universal Religion : 
China. Boston, 1877, xxiv, 975 pp., 8vo, cloth. 

PAMPHLETS. 

The Crisis of Freedom. — A sermon on the rendition of 
Burns, preached Sunday, June 11, 1854. 

A Sermon on the Assassination of President Lincoln. Sun- 
day, April 16, 1865. 

The Religion of a Free Church. — A discourse delivered at 
the opening of the Free Chapel in Lynn, Sunday, June 10, 
1866. , 

A Ministry in Free Religion. — A discourse delivered on the 
occasion of resigning this relation to the Free Church at Lynn, 
on Sunday, June 26, 1870. 

A Memorial of Charles Sumner. — A discourse delivered to 
the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society of Boston, on Sun- 
day, March 15, 1874. 
• 

IN " THE RADICAL." 

Bond or Free. October, 1865. 

Discourses concerning the Foundations of Religious Belief: — 

I. Past and Present. November, 1865. 
II. Real and Imaginary Authority. December, 1865. 

III. Fallacies of Supernaturalism. January, 1866. 

IV. The Adequacy of Natural Religion. March, 1866. 
V. Spiritual Needs and Certainties. May, 1866. 

VI. Naturalism. July, 1866. 

Letter to James Freeman Clarke in reply to Criticisms on 
" Bond or Free." February, 1866. 
Second Letter. October, 1866. 
American Religion. January, 1867. 
The Spiritual Promise of America. April, 1867. 
30 



466 



APPENDIX. 



George L. Stearns. June, 1867. 
Natural Democracy. May, 1868. 
Shadow and Eclipse. December, 1868. 
Foreclosure of Spiritual Unity. January, 1869. 
The Piety of Pantheism — As Illustrated in Hindu Philosophy 
and Faith. June, 1869. 

Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle. August, 1869. 

Free Religion and the Free State. October, 1869. 

The Search for God. April, 1870. 

Historic Birthdays. March, 1871. 

Labor Parties and Labor Reformers. November, 1871. 

IN "THE RADICAL REVIEW." 

Transcendentalism. November, 1877, 

BEFORE THE FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION. 

The Natural Sympathy of Religions. — Report of F. R. A. 
1870. 

Freedom in Religion. — Report of F. R. A. 1873. 



Mr. Johnson was also a contributor to the Anti-Slavery 
Standard, The Liberator, The Liberty Bell, The Common- 
ivealth, and The Index. His articles, sermons, and letters 
in these give his attitude toward the great issues of his 
times. 



V 

I 



